Health Capacity to Work at Older Ages: Evidence from the U.S

Courtney Coile, Kevin Milligan and David Wise ()

No 21940, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Public programs that benefit older individuals, such as Social Security and Medicare, may be changed in the future in ways that reflect an expectation of longer work lives. But do older Americans have the health capacity to work longer? This paper explores this question by asking how much older individuals could work if they worked as much as those with the same mortality rate in the past or as much as their younger counterparts in similar health. Using both methods, we estimate that there is significant additional capacity to work at older ages. We also explore whether there are differences in health capacity across education groups and whether health has improved more over time for the highly educated, using education quartiles to surmount the challenge of changing levels of education over time.

JEL-codes: I19 J14 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-hea
Note: AG
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published as Health Capacity to Work at Older Ages: Evidence from the United States , Courtney Coile, Kevin Milligan, David A. Wise. in Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: The Capacity to Work at Older Ages , Wise. 2017

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