Do the sick retire early? Chronic illness, asset accumulation and early retirement

M. Solaiman Miah and Virginia Wilcox

Applied Economics, 2007, vol. 39, issue 15, 1921-1936

Abstract: Our objective is to determine how chronic illness affects asset accumulation and retirement. Previous studies have found that poor health leads to early retirement, but those studies failed to look at the indirect impact of chronic illness on retirement. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we define an illness as chronic if the individual reports having asthma, cancer, heart disease, stroke or diabetes for four or more years. We first estimate how a chronic illness influences asset accumulation. We then estimate how asset accumulation and current poor health influence retirement. We observe that the vast majority of the chronically ill population do not report their general health to be poor nor do they report functional limitations in activities of daily living. Nevertheless, our results indicate that chronic illness leads these people to accumulate fewer assets during their working years and consequently retire later. Neither researchers nor policy-makers discussing the many critical issues surrounding illness and retirement have addressed this issue.

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036840600690165 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:taf:applec:v:39:y:2007:i:15:p:1921-1936

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036840600690165

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().