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Research report

Medical and nursery care with endogenous health and longevity

BP2-STS

    01.08.2019

22

Health
Nursery Care
Health Behavior
Life Expectancy
English For the population over 65, nursery care expenditures constitute on average the largest share in total health expenditures. In this paper, we distinguish between medical care, intended to improve ones state of health, and personal care required for daily routine. Personal care can be either carried out autonomously or by a third party. In the course of aging, autonomous personal care is eventually substituted by nursery care. We set up a life-cycle model in which individuals are subject to physiological aging, calibrate it with data from gerontology, and analyze the interplay between medical and nursery care. We replicate health behavior and life expectancy of individuals and in particular the empirically observed patterns of medical and nursery care expenditure. We then analyze the impact of better health and rising life expectancy, triggered by rising income and medical progress, on the expected cost of nursery care in the future. We predict an elasticity of nursery care expenditure with respect to life expectancy of 1/3. In terms of present value at age 20, life-time nursery care expenditure is predicted to decline with rising life expectancy.
Collections
Faculty
Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales et du management
Language
  • English
Classification
Economics
Other electronic version

Faculté SES

Version révisée (01-2020)

Series statement
  • Working Papers SES ; 505
License
License undefined
Identifiers
  • RERO DOC 327035
  • RERO R008957832
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/308165
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