This study presents a new view on the association between education and longevity. In contrast to the earlier literature, which focused on inefficient health behavior of the less educated, we investigate the extent to which the education gradient can be explained by fully rational and efficient...

This paper integrates into public economics a biologically founded, stochastic process of individual ageing. The novel approach enables us to quantitatively characterize the optimal joint design of health and retirement policy behind the veil of ignorance for today and in response to future...

There exists a steady trend at which later born cohorts, at the same age, are healthier than earlier born cohorts. We show this trend by computing a health deficit index for a panel of 14 European Countries and six waves of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We find...