Health Investment over the Life-Cycle

Hui He, Hao Zhang and Timothy Halliday
Additional contact information
Hao Zhang: University of Hawaii

No 1179, 2010 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

Abstract: We study the evolution of health investment over the life-cycle by calibrating a model of endogenous health accumulation. The model is able to produce the decline in labor supply with age as well as the hump-shaped consumption profile. In both cases, health and health investment play a crucial role as the former encroaches upon healthy time and the latter crowds out non-medical expenditures as people age. Finally, we quantify the value of health as both an investment and a consumption good. We show that the investment motive is about three times higher than the consumption motive during the early 20s, but decreases over the life-cycle until it disappears at retirement. In contrast, the consumption motive increases with age and surpasses the investment motive during the mid 40s.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2010/paper_1179.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: HEALTH INVESTMENT OVER THE LIFE-CYCLE (2019)
Working Paper: Health Investment over the Life-Cycle (2012)
Working Paper: Health Investment over the Life-Cycle (2009)
Working Paper: Health Investment over the Life-Cycle (2009)
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:red:sed010:1179

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2010 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Zimmermann ().