IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/8236.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Financial Problems of the Elderly: A Holistic Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Victor R. Fuchs

Abstract

A holistic approach to the financial problems of the elderly focuses simultaneously on their expenditures that are self financed as well as those that are financed by transfers from the young (under age65). It also focuses simultaneously on paying for health care and paying for other goods and services. The income and health care expenditures not paid from personal income, provides a useful framework for empirical application of the holistic approach . In 1997, approximately 35 percent of the elderly's full income was devoted to health care; 65 percent to other goods and services. Approximately 56 percent of full income was provided by transfers from the young and 44 percent by the elderly themselves. The paper shows how these percentages might change under alternative assumptions about the growth of health care relative to other goods and services and the effect of these changes on the need for more saving and more work prior to retirement.

Suggested Citation

  • Victor R. Fuchs, 2001. "The Financial Problems of the Elderly: A Holistic Approach," NBER Working Papers 8236, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8236
    Note: EH AG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8236.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael D. Hurd & Kathleen McGarry, 2002. "The Predictive Validity of Subjective Probabilities of Survival," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(482), pages 966-985, October.
    2. Venti, Steven F & Wise, David A, 1998. "The Cause of Wealth Dispersion at Retirement: Choice or Chance?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 185-191, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dov Chernichovsky & Sara Markowitz, 2001. "Toward a Framework for Improving Health Care Financing for an Aging Population: The Case of Israel," NBER Working Papers 8415, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Dov Chernichovsky & Sara Markowitz, 2004. "Aging and aggregate costs of medical care: conceptual and policy issues," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(6), pages 543-562, June.
    3. Avi Dor & Joseph Sudano & David W. Baker, 2003. "The Effects of Private Insurance on Measures of Health: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study," NBER Working Papers 9774, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Alfons Palangkaraya & Jongsay Yong, 2009. "Population ageing and its implications on aggregate health care demand: empirical evidence from 22 OECD countries," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 9(4), pages 391-402, December.
    5. Maria Daniela GIAMMANCO & Lara GITTO & Ferdinando OFRIA, 2021. "Senior Citizens’ Fruition Of Cultural Institutions: Some Evidence From The Italian Insular Regions," Regional and Sectoral Economic Studies, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 21(2), pages 5-18.
    6. John Goodman, 2006. "Consumer Directed Health Care," NFI Policy Briefs 2006-PB-20, Indiana State University, Scott College of Business, Networks Financial Institute.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Victor R. Fuchs, 2000. "Medicare Reform: The Larger Picture," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 57-70, Spring.
    2. Gan, Li & Huang, Feng & Mayer, Adalbert, 2015. "A simple test for private information in insurance markets with heterogeneous insurance demand," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 197-200.
    3. Mario Schnalzenberger & Nicole Schneeweis & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer & Martina Zweimüller, 2014. "Job Quality and Employment of Older People in Europe," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 28(2), pages 141-162, June.
    4. Olken, Benjamin A., 2009. "Corruption perceptions vs. corruption reality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(7-8), pages 950-964, August.
    5. Hernaes, Erik & Markussen, Simen & Piggott, John & Vestad, Ola L., 2013. "Does retirement age impact mortality?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 586-598.
    6. Amy Finkelstein & James Poterba, 2004. "Adverse Selection in Insurance Markets: Policyholder Evidence from the U.K. Annuity Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(1), pages 183-208, February.
    7. Wu, Shang & Stevens, Ralph & Thorp, Susan, 2015. "Cohort and target age effects on subjective survival probabilities: Implications for models of the retirement phase," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 39-56.
    8. Joan Costa-Font & Cristina Vilaplana-Prieto, 2022. "Biased survival expectations and behaviours: Does domain specific information matter?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 65(3), pages 285-317, December.
    9. Louis Kaplow, 2009. "Utility from Accumulation," NBER Working Papers 15595, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Silvia Balia, 2007. "Reporting expected longevity and smoking: evidence from the SHARE," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 07/10, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    11. Haan, Peter & Prowse, Victoria, 2014. "Longevity, life-cycle behavior and pension reform," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 178(P3), pages 582-601.
    12. Annamaria Lusardi, 2000. "Explaining Why So Many Households Do Not Save," Working Papers 0001, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
    13. Basit Zafar, 2011. "How Do College Students Form Expectations?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(2), pages 301-348.
    14. Bruno Arpino & Pierluigi Conzo & Francesco Salustri, 2022. "I am a survivor, keep on surviving: early-life exposure to conflict and subjective survival probabilities in adult life," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(2), pages 471-517, April.
    15. Cormac O'Dea & David Sturrock, 2019. "Survival pessimism and the demand for annuities," IFS Working Papers W19/02, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    16. Audrey Light & Kathleen McGarry, 2004. "Why Parents Play Favorites: Explanations for Unequal Bequests," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1669-1681, December.
    17. Padmaja Ayyagari, 2019. "Health Insurance and Early Retirement Plans: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act," American Journal of Health Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 5(4), pages 533-560, Fall.
    18. Giovanna Apicella & Enrico G. De Giorgi, 2024. "A behavioral gap in survival beliefs," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 91(1), pages 213-247, March.
    19. Adeline Delavande, 2008. "Measuring revisions to subjective expectations," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 43-82, February.
    20. Julien Hugonnier & Florian Pelgrin & Pascal St‐Amour, 2020. "Closing down the shop: Optimal health and wealth dynamics near the end of life," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(2), pages 138-153, February.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8236. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.