An Invisible Oncologist : Health Implications of Financing Frictions

Approximately 38.4% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetime. This paper investigates the impacts of financing frictions on the longevity of cancer patients. We first document that an increase in house price causes a large improvement in patients' survivals, and the sensitivity is closely related to local credit conditions. We then propose a life-cycle model of portfolio choice where agents face a cancer risk but treatment can be limited by borrowing constraints. Counterfactual analyses suggest that a 5% increase in borrowing limit extends the longevity of more than 300,000 patients by on average a half-year