Health Dynamics and Heterogeneous Life Expectancies

Richard Foltyn and Jonna Olsson

Working Papers from Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow

Abstract: Using biennial data from the Health and Retirement Study, we estimate age-dependent health dynamics and survival probabilities at annual frequency conditional on race, sex, and health. The health gradient in life expectancy is steep and persists after controlling for socioeconomic status. Moreover, even conditional on health and socioeconomic status, the racial gap in life expectancy remains large. Simulations show that this gap affects savings rates but does not play a major role in explaining the racial wealth gap. However, differences in mortality imply that black individuals on average can expect to receive 15% less in Social Security benefits in present value terms.

Keywords: Life expectancy; health dynamics; racial life expectancy gap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 E21 I14 J14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-hea, nep-isf and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gla:glaewp:2021_17

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