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Report
Heterogeneity in expected longevities
We develop a new methodology to compute differences in the expected longevity of individuals who are in different socioeconomic groups at age 50. We deal with two main problems associated with the standard use of life expectancy: that people?s socioeconomic characteristics evolve over time and that there is a time trend that reduces mortality over time. Using HRS data for individuals from different cohorts, we estimate a hazard model for survival with time-varying stochastic endogenous covariates that yields the desired expected durations. We uncover an enormous amount of heterogeneity in ...
Journal Article
Mortality Reductions: Fast for Poorer Nations, Slow for Richer Nations
The same increase in life expectancy took longer for a sample of today’s richer countries than it did for some of today’s poorer countries, but it also occurred earlier.
Speech
When the Facts Change…: remarks at the 9th High-Level Conference on the International Monetary System, Zürich, Switzerland
Remarks at the 9th High-Level Conference on the International Monetary System, Zrich, Switzerland.
The Evolution of the Racial Gap in U.S. Life Expectancy
White Americans live longer than Black Americans, but the gap has been narrowing. What has been driving that in recent decades?
Newsletter
How do the risks of living long and facing high medical expenses affect the elderly’s saving behavior?
This article shows that the elderly, especially those with high lifetime incomes, maintain large asset holdings to account for the possibility of their living a long time and facing high medical expenses.
Working Paper
Demographics and Real Interest Rates Across Countries and Over Time
We propose that the natural rate of unemployment may have an active role in the business cycle, in contrast to a widespread view that the rate is fairly smooth and at most only weakly cyclical. We demonstrate that the tendency to treat the natural rate as near-constant would explain the surprisingly low slope of the Phillips curve. We observe that evidence is weak about this basic point–the evidence neither comes close to rejecting the conventional view nor does it reject a very different view in which fluctuations in the natural rate are associated with a substantial fraction of cyclical ...
Working Paper
Technology Adoption, Mortality, and Population Dynamics
We develop a quantitative theory of mortality and population dynamics, emphasizing individuals' decisions to reduce their mortality by adopting better health technology. Expanded use of this technology reduces the cost of adoption and confers a dynamic externality by increasing the future number of individuals who use the technology. Our model generates a diffusion curve whose shape dictates the pace of mortality reduction. The model explains historical trends in mortality rates and life expectancies at various ages and population dynamics in Western Europe. Unlike Malthusian theories based ...
Working Paper
Technology adoption, mortality, and population dynamics
We develop a quantitative theory of mortality and population dynamics, emphasizing individuals' decisions to reduce their mortality by adopting better health technology. Expanded use of this technology reduces the cost of adoption and confers a dynamic externality by increasing the future number of individuals who use the technology. Our model generates a diffusion curve whose shape dictates the pace of mortality reduction. The model explains historical trends in mortality rates and life expectancies at various ages and population dynamics in Western Europe. Unlike Malthusian theories based ...
Working Paper
Technology adoption, mortality, and population dynamics
We develop a quantitative theory of mortality and population dynamics. We emphasize individuals' decisions to reduce their mortality by adopting better health technology. Adoption becomes cheaper as more individuals use better technology. It also confers a dynamic externality by increasing the future number of individuals who use the better technology. Our model generates a diffusion curve whose shape dictates the pace of mortality reduction. The model explains historical trends in mortality rates and life expectancies at various ages and population dynamics in Western Europe. Unlike ...
Working Paper
Technology Adoption, Mortality, and Population Dynamics
We develop a quantitative theory of mortality and population dynamics. We emphasize individuals' decisions to reduce their mortality by adopting better health technology. Adoption becomes cheaper as more individuals use better technology. It also confers a dynamic externality by increasing the future number of individuals who use the better technology. Our model generates a diffusion curve whose shape dictates the pace of mortality reduction. The model explains historical trends in mortality rates and life expectancies at various ages and population dynamics in Western Europe. Unlike ...