Expectations, Life Expectancy, and Economic Behavior

Expectations, Life Expectancy, and Economic Behavior
Author: Daniel S. Hamermesh
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 1985
Genre:
ISBN:

Unlike price expectations, which are central to macroeconomic theory and have been examined extensively using survey data, formation of individuals' horizons, which are central to the theory of life-cycle behavior, have been completely neglected. This is especially surprising since life expectancy of adults has increased especially rapidly in Western countries in the past ten years. This study presents the results of analyzing responses by two groups--economists and a random sample--to a questionnaire designed to elicit subjective expectations and probabilities of survival. It shows that people do not extrapolate past improvements in longevity when they determine their subjective horizons, though they are fully aware of levels of and movements within today's life tables. They skew subjective survival probabilities in a way that implies the subjective distribution has greater variance than its actuarial counterpart; and the subjective variance decreases with age. They also base their subjective horizons disproportionately on their relatives' longevity, and long-lived relatives increase uncertainty about the distribution of subjective survival probabilities. As one example of the many areas of life-cycle behavior to which the results are applicable, the study examines the consumption-leisure choices of the optimizing consumer over his lifetime. It finds that shortfalls in utility in old age because people's ex ante horizons had to be updated as -- average longevity increased are relatively small. This implies that large subsidies to retirees under today's Social Security system cannot be justified as compensation for an unexpectedly long retirement for which they failed to save

Expectations, Life Expectancy and Economic Behavior

Expectations, Life Expectancy and Economic Behavior
Author: Daniel S. Hamermesh
Publisher:
Total Pages: 52
Release: 1982
Genre: Cost and standard of living
ISBN:

Unlike price expectations, which are central to macroeconomic theory and have been examined extensively using survey data, formation of individuals' horizons, which are central to the theory of life-cycle behavior, have been completely neglected. This is especially surprising since life expectancy of adults has increased especially rapidly in Western countries in the past ten years. This study presents the results of analyzing responses by two groups--economists and a random sample--to a questionnaire designed to elicit subjective expectations and probabilities of survival. It shows that people do not extrapolate past improvements in longevity when they determine their subjective horizons, though they are fully aware of levels of and movements within today's life tables. They skew subjective survival probabilities in a way that implies the subjective distribution has greater variance than its actuarial counterpart; and the subjective variance decreases with age. They also base their subjective horizons disproportionately on their relatives' longevity, and long-lived relatives increase uncertainty about the distribution of subjective survival probabilities. As one example of the many areas of life-cycle behavior to which the results are applicable, the study examines the consumption-leisure choices of the optimizing consumer over his lifetime. It finds that shortfalls in utility in old age because people's ex ante horizons had to be updated as -- average longevity increased are relatively small. This implies that large subsidies to retirees under today's Social Security system cannot be justified as compensation for an unexpectedly long retirement for which they failed to save.

The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income

The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2015-09-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 030931710X

The U.S. population is aging. Social Security projections suggest that between 2013 and 2050, the population aged 65 and over will almost double, from 45 million to 86 million. One key driver of population aging is ongoing increases in life expectancy. Average U.S. life expectancy was 67 years for males and 73 years for females five decades ago; the averages are now 76 and 81, respectively. It has long been the case that better-educated, higher-income people enjoy longer life expectancies than less-educated, lower-income people. The causes include early life conditions, behavioral factors (such as nutrition, exercise, and smoking behaviors), stress, and access to health care services, all of which can vary across education and income. Our major entitlement programs - Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Supplemental Security Income - have come to deliver disproportionately larger lifetime benefits to higher-income people because, on average, they are increasingly collecting those benefits over more years than others. This report studies the impact the growing gap in life expectancy has on the present value of lifetime benefits that people with higher or lower earnings will receive from major entitlement programs. The analysis presented in The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income goes beyond an examination of the existing literature by providing the first comprehensive estimates of how lifetime benefits are affected by the changing distribution of life expectancy. The report also explores, from a lifetime benefit perspective, how the growing gap in longevity affects traditional policy analyses of reforms to the nation's leading entitlement programs. This in-depth analysis of the economic impacts of the longevity gap will inform debate and assist decision makers, economists, and researchers.

The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income

The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income
Author: Committee on Population--Phase II
Publisher:
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2015-09-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780309317078

The U.S. population is aging. Social Security projections suggest that between 2013 and 2050, the population aged 65 and over will almost double, from 45 million to 86 million. One key driver of population aging is ongoing increases in life expectancy. Average U.S. life expectancy was 67 years for males and 73 years for females five decades ago; the averages are now 76 and 81, respectively. It has long been the case that better-educated, higher-income people enjoy longer life expectancies than less-educated, lower-income people. The causes include early life conditions, behavioral factors (such as nutrition, exercise, and smoking behaviors), stress, and access to health care services, all of which can vary across education and income. Our major entitlement programs - Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Supplemental Security Income - have come to deliver disproportionately larger lifetime benefits to higher-income people because, on average, they are increasingly collecting those benefits over more years than others. This report studies the impact the growing gap in life expectancy has on the present value of lifetime benefits that people with higher or lower earnings will receive from major entitlement programs. The analysis presented in "The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income" goes beyond an examination of the existing literature by providing the first comprehensive estimates of how lifetime benefits are affected by the changing distribution of life expectancy. The report also explores, from a lifetime benefit perspective, how the growing gap in longevity affects traditional policy analyses of reforms to the nation's leading entitlement programs. This in-depth analysis of the economic impacts of the longevity gap will inform debate and assist decision makers, economists, and researchers.

Handbook of Economic Expectations

Handbook of Economic Expectations
Author: Ruediger Bachmann
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 876
Release: 2022-11-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0128234768

Handbook of Economic Expectations discusses the state-of-the-art in the collection, study and use of expectations data in economics, including the modelling of expectations formation and updating, as well as open questions and directions for future research. The book spans a broad range of fields, approaches and applications using data on subjective expectations that allows us to make progress on fundamental questions around the formation and updating of expectations by economic agents and their information sets. The information included will help us study heterogeneity and potential biases in expectations and analyze impacts on behavior and decision-making under uncertainty. - Combines information about the creation of economic expectations and their theories, applications and likely futures - Provides a comprehensive summary of economics expectations literature - Explores empirical and theoretical dimensions of expectations and their relevance to a wide array of subfields in economics

Death of a Parent

Death of a Parent
Author: Debra Umberson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2003-04-28
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1139440020

When a parent dies, most adults are seized by an unexpected crisis that can trigger a profound transformation. Using in-depth interviews and national surveys, Dr Umberson explains why the death of a parent has strong effects on adults and looks at protective factors that help some individuals experience better mental health following the death than they did when the parent was alive. This is the first book to rely on sound scientific method to document the significant adverse effects of parental death for adults in a national population. Exploring the social and psychological risk factors that make some people more vulnerable than others, readers will come to view the loss of a parent in a new way: as a turning point in adult development.

The Longevity Economy

The Longevity Economy
Author: Joseph F. Coughlin
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2017-11-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1610396650

Oldness: a social construct at odds with reality that constrains how we live after middle age and stifles business thinking on how to best serve a group of consumers, workers, and innovators that is growing larger and wealthier with every passing day. Over the past two decades, Joseph F. Coughlin has been busting myths about aging with groundbreaking multidisciplinary research into what older people actually want -- not what conventional wisdom suggests they need. In The Longevity Economy, Coughlin provides the framing and insight business leaders need to serve the growing older market: a vast, diverse group of consumers representing every possible level of health and wealth, worth about $8 trillion in the United States alone and climbing. Coughlin provides deep insight into a population that consistently defies expectations: people who, through their continued personal and professional ambition, desire for experience, and quest for self-actualization, are building a striking, unheralded vision of longer life that very few in business fully understand. His focus on women -- they outnumber men, control household spending and finances, and are leading the charge toward tomorrow's creative new narrative of later life -- is especially illuminating. Coughlin pinpoints the gap between myth and reality and then shows businesses how to bridge it. As the demographics of global aging transform and accelerate, it is now critical to build a new understanding of the shifting physiological, cognitive, social, family, and psychological realities of the longevity economy.

Ageing, Health, and Productivity

Ageing, Health, and Productivity
Author: Pietro Garibaldi
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2010-11-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0191036935

Increase in life expectancy is arguably the most remarkable by-product of modern economic growth. In the last 30 years we have gained roughly 2.5 years of longevity every decade, both in Europe and the United States. Successfully managing ageing and longevity over the next twenty years is one of the major structural challenges faced by policy makers in advanced economies, particularly in health spending, social security administration, and labour market institutions. This book looks closely into those challenges and identifies the fundamental issues at both the macroeconomic and microeconomic level. The first half of the book studies the macroeconomic relationships between health spending, technological progress in medical related sectors, economic growth, and welfare state reforms. In the popular press, longevity and population ageing are typically perceived as a tremendous burden. However, with a proper set of reforms, advanced economies have the option of transforming the enormous challenge posed by longevity into a long term opportunity to boost aggregate outcomes. The basic prerequisite of a healthy ageing scenario is a substantial structural reform in social security and in labour market institutions. The second part of the book looks closely into the microeconomic relationship between population ageing and productivity, both at the individual and at the firm level. There is surprisingly little research on such key questions. The book contributes to this debate in two ways. It presents a detailed analysis of the determinants of productivity, with a focus on both the long-run historical evolution and the cross sectional changes. It also uses econometric analysis to look into the determinants of the various dimensions of individual productivity. The volume concludes that the complex relationship between population ageing and longevity is not written in stone, and can be modified by properly designed choices.

Probability is All We Have

Probability is All We Have
Author: James K. Hammitt
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2019-03-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0429578296

First published in 1990. In this study, the author suggests ways that policy-makers can think about environmental policy choice that responds to the importance of uncertainty and delay. Hammitt describes several tools for environmental policy analysis and illustrates their application to important policy issues. In the first part of the book, dealing with stratospheric-ozone depletion, the author describes techniques for accommodating outcome uncertainties. The second part of the study considers the health risks associated with pesticide residues on food. The final section addresses the issue of potential global climate change, and describes how the tools explored can be applied to this new challenge. This book should be of greatest interest to academic, government, and industry analysts and others concerned with improving methods for environmental-policy making.