EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Expectations, Life Expectancy, and Economic Behavior

Daniel S. Hamermesh

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1985, vol. 100, issue 2, 389-408

Abstract: The formation of individuals' horizons, which is central to the theory of life-cycle behavior, has been completely neglected. This is especially surprising, since the life expectancy of adults has recently increased rapidly in Western countries. This study analyzes responses to a questionnaire designed to elicit subjective expectations and probabilities of survival. People do extrapolate past improvements in longevity when they determine their subjective horizons, and they are fully aware of levels of and movements within today's life tables. The subjective distribution has greater variance than its actuarial counterpart; and the subjective variance decreases with age. The implications of these findings for optimal Social Security, for the construction of annuities, for the analysis of savings behavior, and for evaluating lifetime earnings are discussed.

Date: 1985
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (183)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/1885388 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Expectations, Life Expectancy, and Economic Behavior (1982) Downloads
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:oup:qjecon:v:100:y:1985:i:2:p:389-408.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-24
Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:100:y:1985:i:2:p:389-408.