 Household portfolio choices, health status and health care systems: A cross-country analysis based on SHAREVincenzo Atella, Marianna Brunetti and Nicole Maestas Journal of Banking & Finance, 2012, vol. 36, issue 5, 1320-1335 Abstract: Health risk is increasingly viewed as an important form of background risk that affects household portfolio decisions. However, its role might be mediated by the presence of a protective full-coverage national health service that could reduce households’ probability of incurring current and future out-of-pocket medical expenditures. We use SHARE data to study the influence of current health status and future health risk on the decision to hold risky assets, across ten European countries with different health systems, each offering a different degree of protection against out-of-pocket medical expenditures. We find robust empirical evidence that perceived health status matters more than objective health status and, consistent with the theory of background risk, health risk affects portfolio choices only in countries with less protective health care systems. Furthermore, portfolio decisions consistent with background risk models are observed only with respect to middle-aged and highly-educated investors. Keywords: Household portfolios; Health status; National health care systems (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:36:y:2012:i:5:p:1320-1335 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2011.11.025 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Banking & Finance is currently edited by Ike Mathur More articles in Journal of Banking & Finance from Elsevier |
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