Growth and Welfare under Endogenous Lifetime

Maik Schneider and Ralph Winkler

Diskussionsschriften from Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft

Abstract: We develop a perpetual youth model to investigate how longevity affects economic growth and welfare. Life expectancy is determined by individuals' investments in healthcare. We find that improvements in the healthcare technology always increase the steady state growth rate. Although the effect is small, even for large increases in longevity, welfare gains may be substantial depending on the type of the technological improvement. We identify two externalities associated with healthcare investments and provide a condition when healthcare expenditures are inefficiently low in the market equilibrium. Finally, we discuss our results with respect to alternative spillover specifications in the production sector.

Keywords: economic growth; endogenous longevity; healthcare expenditures; healthcare technology; quality-quantity trade-off (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 J10 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-dge, nep-fdg and nep-hea
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.vwiit.ch/dp/dp1013.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Growth and Welfare under Endogenous Lifetimes (2021)
Working Paper: Growth and Welfare under Endogenous Lifetime (2017)
Working Paper: Growth and Welfare under Endogenous Lifetime (2013)
Working Paper: Growth and Welfare under Endogenous Lifetime (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ube:dpvwib:dp1013

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Diskussionsschriften from Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Franz Koelliker (franz.koelliker@unibe.ch).