This paper analyzes the role that health status plays in household portfolio decisions using data from the Health and Retirement Study. The results indicate that health is a significant predictor of both the probability of owning different types of financial assets and the share of financial...

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study and the Survey of Consumer Finances, we show that households that experience adverse financial shocks worry more about the adequacy of their financial resources in retirement, even after controlling for the effects of these shocks on overall...