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on Economics of Ageing |
| By: | Elena Bassoli (ETH Zürich; Ca’ Foscari University of Venice); Agar Brugiavini (Department of Economics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; Institute for Fiscal Studies); Ludovico Carrino (University of Trieste; King’s College London) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new evidence on the cost of long-term care for individuals and society by looking at the onset of dementia in a population of older individuals aged 50 and above. By exploiting the Survey of Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the English Longitudinal Survey of Ageing (ELSA), we causally assess how a dementia shock affects commodities purchases and other domains of individual's life, in the short-run. We find that individuals reduce food consumption and increase rent and housing-related expenditures. We show that the demand for care is also affected, with an increase in both hospital, formal and informal care. Results are robust to alternative definitions of the shock and sensitivity analyses. Additionally, we discover spill-over effects on the spouse's well-being when the partner becomes sick. Finally, we compute the financial burden on individuals following a dementia diagnosis in terms of formal and informal care costs. |
| Keywords: | health economics, long-term care, SHARE, ELSA, welfare costs |
| JEL: | I12 I14 J14 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ven:wpaper:2024:13 |
| By: | Mason , Andrew (University of Hawaii at Manoa); Park, Donghyun (Asian Development Bank); Estrada, Gemma (Asian Development Bank) |
| Abstract: | The population of developing Asia, in particular East Asia, is aging. Funding the needs of its growing population of older adults is the biggest socioeconomic challenge that aging presents for the region. The central objective of our paper is to analyze empirically how individuals fund their old-age needs in different economies. While developing Asian economies are the focus of our analysis, we also present results for high-income economies and non-Asian developing economies for comparative purposes. Our analysis relies heavily on wealth measures because these facilitate comparisons of flows over the life cycle, which vary strongly with age. Our analysis indicates that developing Asia’s old-age funding needs will rise substantially because of population aging between 2025 and 2065. We find that labor income will play a smaller role in funding the region’s old-age needs, while public and private transfers will play a larger role. While expanding public transfers will contribute toward old-age economic security, the region must carefully plan such expansion and avoid unsustainable generosity to safeguard the macroeconomic stability that underpinned its rapid economic growth and development. |
| Keywords: | aging; Asia; old-age economic security; public transfers |
| JEL: | J11 J14 |
| Date: | 2024–09–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbewp:0742 |
| By: | Nicolò Russo; Rory McGee; Mariacristina De Nardi; Margherita Borella; Ross Abram |
| Abstract: | We measure health inequality during middle and old age by race, ethnicity, and gender and evaluate the extent to which it can explain inequalities in other key economic outcomes using the Health and Retirement Study data set. Our main measure of health is frailty, which is the fraction of one's possible health deficits and is related to biological age. We find staggering health inequality: At age 55, Black men and women have the frailty, or biological age, of White men and women 13 and 20 years older, respectively, while Hispanic men and women exhibit frailty akin to White men and women 5 and 6 years older. The health deficits composing frailty reveal that most health deficits are more likely for Black and Hispanic people than for White people, with the notable exception of those requiring a diagnosis. Imputing medical diagnoses to Black and Hispanic people uncovers even larger health gaps, especially for Black men. Health inequality also emerges as a powerful determinant of economic inequality. If Black individuals at age 55 had the health of their White peers, the life expectancy gap between these two groups would halve, and the gap in disability duration would decrease by 40-70%. Other outcomes are similarly affected by health at age 55, indicating that targeted health interventions for minority groups before middle age could substantially reduce economic disparities in the quantity and quality of life. |
| JEL: | D1 D10 H4 I14 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32971 |
| By: | Izuhara, Misa; West, Karen; Hudson, Jim; Felstead, Aimee; Arrigoitia, Melissa Fernández; Scanlon, Kath |
| Abstract: | Mutual support among residents in collaborative housing for older people presents an alternative care model to family or formal social care provided in individuals’ homes or specialised care facilities. This is particularly the case in cohousing, where residents commit to mutual support and exercise autonomy through self-governance. Cohousing also supports the ageing processes by fostering greater wellbeing and significantly lessening social isolation and loneliness. Further, it offers the potential for older people to collectively maintain greater agency in later life and manage age-related health decline. Despite a growing body of literature on ageing and collaborative housing, to date little research has explored how later-life transitions are negotiated among residents of collaborative housing. Drawing on longitudinal, qualitative research on collaborative housing communities in England between 2021 and 2023, this article examines age-related challenges residents face in cohousing, and how they respond to such changing care needs individually and collectively. Analysing data from two waves of fieldwork in three cohousing communities, it examines how the mutual-support functions of the communities act as an intermediary to facilitate communication with different parties, formal and informal care provision and decision-making. The intermediary role tends not to replace the need for formal social care or the involvement of family but provides a supportive buffer between the individual and the family and formal services. Despite the lack of built-in care services placing a potentially heavier burden on residents, the ‘intentional’ commitment to mutual support in cohousing contributes significantly to extending agency in later life. |
| Keywords: | agency; cohousing; collaborative housing; intermediary; later life transitions; mutual support |
| JEL: | R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2024–09–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:125557 |
| By: | Guilio Fella; Martin B. Holm; Thomas M. Pugh |
| Abstract: | We use administrative data for Norway to estimate an incomplete-market life-cycle model of retired singles and couples with a bequest motive, health-dependent utility, and uncertain longevity and health. We allow the parameters of the bequest utility to differ between households with and without offspring. Our estimates imply a very strong utility of residual wealth (bequest motive), in line with the estimates by Lockwood (2018). The bequest motive accounts for approximately three-quarters of aggregate wealth at age 85. More surprisingly, we estimate similar utility of residual wealth for households with and without offspring. We interpret this as, prima facie, evidence that the utility of residual wealth represents forces beyond an altruistic bequest motive. |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bbq:wpaper:0008 |
| By: | Richiardi, Matteo; Bronka, Patryk; van de Ven, Justin |
| Abstract: | Caring has its most obvious effects when it is actually required. Yet the effects of care are likely to extend to other periods of the life course. People may anticipate the need to provide informal care, either as part of their fertility decisions, or in response to deteriorating health of loved-ones. Similarly, a reason given for high savings rates among the elderly is the desire to self-insure against the needs consequent on adverse health shocks, including the need for (expensive) formal care. Furthermore, both informal care and incapacity demanding care can have effects that persist well after the actual episodes of care are past, for example, due to labour market scarring and/or depleted savings. This study uses current best-practice methods of economic analysis to explore these phenomena. Focussing on the channels of employment and savings, the study considers how the effects of care vary over the life course, and with the time that episodes of care are encountered. |
| Date: | 2024–10–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ese:cempwp:cempa7-24 |
| By: | Jang, Chaeyun |
| Abstract: | Digital transformation encompasses fundamental changes in strategy, operations, and culture through the adoption of digital technologies. The franchised restaurant industry in South Korea is undergoing such a transformation, prominently using kiosks for ordering and payment processes. While kiosks enhance convenience and efficiency, they pose challenges for the elderly, who face digital exclusion. South Korea's aging society heightens this issue, as digital exclusion can lead to broader social exclusion. Addressing kiosk accessibility in the private sector, where adoption is rising, necessitates understanding the perceptions of those managing these services. This study adopts Social Representation Theory (SRT) to explore restaurant industry employees' understanding of kiosk accessibility for the elderly. Through semi-structured interviews and core-periphery analysis, the findings reveal both business opportunities and organizational challenges in improving kiosk accessibility for the elderly. This study offers implications for integrating digital inclusion into the digital transformation of private industries. |
| Keywords: | Kiosk, Digital accessibility, Digital inclusion for elderly, Restaurant industry in South Korea, Social representation theory |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:itsb24:302474 |
| By: | Jun Dai; Guanqing Shi; Xiaoke Xie; Aitong Xie |
| Abstract: | Chinese-style modernization involves the modernization of a large population, requiring top-level design in terms of scale and structure. The population perspective in Xi Jinping's Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era serves as the fundamental guide for population policies. The three-child policy and delayed retirement will affect the supply of labor in China and challenge the previous assessments of China's Lewis Turning Point. This study examines the rural surplus labor transfer from 2013 to 2022 based on urban and rural data. The results indicate that China's overall wage levels have continuously increased, the urban-rural income gap has narrowed, and the transfer of surplus rural labor has slowed. China has passed the first turning point and entered a transitional phase. Factors such as the level of agricultural mechanization, urbanization rate, and urban-rural income gap are more significant in influencing the transfer of surplus labor than the normal working-age population ratio. The delayed retirement policy has a more immediate impact on the supply and transfer of rural surplus labor than the three-child policy. Additionally, delayed retirement can offset the negative impact of the reduced relative surplus labor supply caused by the three-child policy, although the three-child policy could increase the future absolute surplus labor supply. |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2409.14914 |
| By: | Congressional Budget Office |
| Abstract: | This report examines changes in the distribution of family wealth from 1989 to 2022. Building on earlier work, CBO used an expanded measure of wealth that includes families’ projected Social Security benefits. Over the 33-year period, family wealth was unevenly distributed, and wealth inequality—measured as the share of wealth held by families in the top 10 percent of the wealth distribution—increased. Wealth was less equally distributed in all years covered by the analysis if future income from Social Security benefits is excluded from the measure of wealth. |
| JEL: | D14 D31 |
| Date: | 2024–10–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbo:report:60343 |
| By: | Ray C. Fair (Yale University) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses world records by age in running, swimming, and rowing to estimate a biological frontier of decline rates for both men and women. Decline rates are assumed to be linear in percent terms up to a certain age and then quadratic after that, where the transition age is estimated. The use of world records avoids the possible problem of survivor bias in a sample. The decline rates are smallest for rowing, followed by swimming and then running. Decline rates for women are roughly the same as those for men for the swimming events. They are slightly larger for the rowing events. They are largest for running. The age at which there is a 50 percent decline from age 30 ranges from 69 to 89, an optimistic result for humans. Ten year decline rates from age 40 to about the mid 60Õs are about 10 percent for running and 5 percent for swimming and rowing. |
| Date: | 2024–09–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2371r1 |
| By: | John Armstrong; Cristin Buescu; James Dalby |
| Abstract: | We study the optimal investment problem for a homogeneous collective of $n$ individuals investing in a Black-Scholes model subject to longevity risk with Epstein--Zin preferences. %and with preferences given by power utility. We compute analytic formulae for the optimal investment strategy, consumption is in discrete-time and there is no systematic longevity risk. We develop a stylised model of systematic longevity risk in continuous time which allows us to also obtain an analytic solution to the optimal investment problem in this case. We numerically solve the same problem using a continuous-time version of the Cairns--Blake--Dowd model. We apply our results to estimate the potential benefits of pooling longevity risk over purchasing an insurance product such as an annuity, and to estimate the benefits of optimal longevity risk pooling in a small heterogeneous fund. |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2409.15325 |
| By: | Christopher J. Ruhm |
| Abstract: | Increases in “deaths of despair” have been hypothesized to provide an important source of the adverse mortality experiences of some groups at the beginning of the 21st century. This study examines this possibility and uncovers the following primary findings. First, mental health deteriorated between 1993 and 2019 for all population subgroups examined. Second, these declines raised death rates and contributed to the adverse mortality trends experienced by prime-age non-Hispanic Whites and, to a lesser extent, Blacks from 1999-2019. However, worsening mental health is not the predominant explanation for them. Third, to extent these relationships support the general idea of “deaths of despair”, the specific causes comprising it should be both broader and different than previously recognized: still including drug mortality and possibly alcohol deaths but replacing suicides with fatalities from heart disease, lower respiratory causes, homicides, and conceivably cancer. Fourth, heterogeneity in the consequences of a given increase of poor mental health are generally more important than the sizes of the changes in poor mental health in explaining Black-White differences in the overall effects of mental health on mortality. |
| JEL: | I1 I14 I18 J10 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32978 |
| By: | Opono, Samuel; Ahimbisibwe, Frank |
| Abstract: | This policy brief, based on a research project funded by VLIR-UOS, focuses on sustainable refugee integration in Uganda, the largest refugee-hosting country in Africa. The project highlights the vulnerabilities and resilience of elderly refugees, aiming to improve their integration into host communities and inform policy interventions through engagement with policymakers. |
| Keywords: | Uganda, South Sudan, refugees |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iob:apbrfs:2024007 |