We develop a pair of risk measures, health and mortality delta, for the universe of life and health insurance products …. A life-cycle model of insurance choice simplifies to replicating the optimal health and mortality delta through a … portfolio of insurance products. We estimate the model to explain the observed variation in health and mortality delta implied …

Has U.S. health care for the elderly become more equitable during the past several decades? When inequality is measured … their intrinsic shortcomings; expenditures depend on preferences, health status, and prices, while outcomes are strongly … affected by health behavior and past illness. We suggest a new approach to measuring inequality: the use of quality …

health debates in the United States for some time. Compression of morbidity would lead to longer life but less rapid medical … Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, we examine how health is changing by time period until death. We show that functional … measures of health are improving, and more so the farther away from death the person is surveyed. Disease rates are relatively …

were impaired in the performance of at least one basic activity. It describes their wealth, living arrangements, and health … characteristics. Tobit regressions are presented that relate utilization of hospital services, paid home-health care, and unreimbursed …, household income and value of home equity do not decrease with either the level of disability or with age. The determinants of …

has proven much more difficult to establish a causal relationship since income and health are jointly determined. We use a … major change in the Social Security law as exogenous variation in income to examine the impact of income on mortality in an … January 1, 1917 generally receive higher benefits than those born afterwards. We compare mortality rates after age 65 for …

drugs, use of other medical services, and health for a nationally representative sample of Medicare beneficiaries. Given the … health. We find that gaining prescription drug insurance through Medicare Part D was associated with a 70% increase in the … health care services or health, as measured by functional status and self-reported health. Among those in poorer health, we …

We analyze data from the Health and Retirement Study on senior citizens' take-up of Medicare Part D. Take-up among …