The dynamics of health (original) (raw)
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A NOTE ON A SIMPLE MODEL OF HEALTH INVESTMENT
Bulletin of Economic Research, 1986
One of the major theoretical innovations in the study of the demand for health and health care has been the 'human capital' approach as applied in the health field by . The Grossman approach has proved a vigorous stimulus to further research both theoretical and empirical. Unfortunately, the richness of these results is often somewhat limited by the technical complexity of the model and of the related literature.
A Health Production Model with Endogenous Retirement
Health Economics, 2013
We formulate a stylized structural model of health, wealth accumulation and retirement decisions building on the human capital framework of health and derive analytic solutions for the time paths of consumption, health, health investment, savings and retirement. We argue that the literature has been unnecessarily restrictive in assuming that health is always at the 'optimal' health level. Exploring the properties of corner solutions, we find that advances in population health decrease the retirement age, whereas at the same time, individuals retire when their health has deteriorated. This potentially explains why retirees point to deteriorating health as an important reason for early retirement, whereas retirement ages have continued to fall in the developed world, despite continued improvements in population health and mortality. In our model, workers with higher human capital invest more in health and, because they stay healthier, retire later than those with lower human capital whose health deteriorates faster.
A Contribution to Health Capital Theory
I present a theory of the demand for health, health investment and longevity, building on the human capital framework for health and addressing limitations of existing models. I predict a negative correlation between health investment and health, that the health of wealthy and educated individuals declines more slowly and that they live longer, that current health status is a function of the initial level of health and the histories of prior health investments made, that health investment rapidly increases near the end of life and that length of life is finite as a result of limited life-time resources (the budget constraint). I derive a structural relation between health and health investment (e.g., medical care) that is suitable for empirical testing.
On the concept of health capital and the demand for health
The Journal of Political Economy, 1972
The aim of this study is to construct a model o f the demand for the commodity "good health." The central proposition o f the model is that health can be viewed as a durable capital stock that produces an output o f healthy time. It is assumed that individuals inherit an initial stock o f health that depreciates with age and can be increased by investment. In this framework. the "shadow price" of health depends on many other variables besides the price of medical care. It is shown that the shadow7 price rises with age i f the rate of depreciation on the stock of health rises over the life cycle and falls with education i f more educated people are more efficient producers o f health. O f particular importance is the conclusion that, under certain conditions, an increase in the shadow, price may simultaneously reduce the quantity o f health demanded and increase the quantity of medical care demanded.
Health State Estimation and the Optimal Retirement Age
2018
Having established a quantitative methodology of estimating the health state function of a population, we can calculate the gradual loss of health due to aging. According to the theory developed the health state is at level one at birth and gradually declines to zero at death. Note that the health state of an individual as a stochastic process (an unpredictable process during time) cannot be estimated quantitatively. Fortunately, the theory of the stochastic processes provided a quite effective tool to estimate the mean value of the health state of a large number of individuals, a population. The form of the health state function estimated for several countries is a declining curve with a negative slope by means of an accelerating decline until the end of life. This was the expected health state development due to aging. The development of the health state function provides quantitative tools for estimation of the health state of the human capital of a population and thus providing ...
The Effect of Health Expenditure on Life Expectancy
International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning
With this paper, we aim to analyse the effect of health expenditures and funding on the national life expectancy of OECD countries. We considered the influence of exogenous factors such as health expenditure, GDP per capita and productivity, population, infant mortality rates, potential years of life lost, deaths from cancer and the suicide rate. We used secondary data gathered between 2005 to 2018 from the annual reports of the OECD, the IMF and the World Bank. To derive the empirical results, econometric models such as linear regression, random effect, fixed effect, Hausman - Taylor Regression, GMM Model - Arellano Bond Estimation, Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE Model) and linear trend analysis through the historical and comparative method were used. Results show that health expenditures positively affect the national life expectancy of OECD countries, showing the impact and causality of national longevity in OECD countries.
Comparative dynamics in a health investment model
Journal of Health Economics, 1999
The method of comparative dynamics fully exploits the intertemporal structure of optimal control models. I derive comparative dynamic results in a simplified demand for health model. The effect of a change in the depreciation rate on the optimal paths for health capital and investment in health is studied by use of a phase diagram.
Accounting for the Rise of Health Spending and Longevity
We estimate a stochastic life-cycle model of endogenous health spending, asset accumulation and retirement to investigate the causes behind the increase in health spending and longevity in the U.S. over the period 1965-2005. We estimate that technological change and the increase in the generosity of health insurance on their own may explain 36% of the rise in health spending (technology 30% and insurance 6%), while income explains only 4% and other health trends 0.5%. By simultaneously occurring over this period, these changes may have led to complementarity effects which we find to explain an additional 57% increase in health spending. The estimates suggest that the elasticity of health spending with respect to changes in both income and insurance is larger with co-occurring improvements in technology. Technological change, taking the form of increased health care productivity at an annual rate of 1.3%, explains almost all of the rise in life expectancy at age 25 over this period, while changes in insurance and income together explain less than 10%. Welfare gains are substantial and most of the gain appears to be due to technological change.
Unpublished paper, Department …, 2004
We develop and test an empirical model of individuals' intertemporal demands for health risk-mitigation programs over the remaining years of their lives. We estimate this model using data from an innovative national survey of demand for preventative health care. We find qualified support for the Erhlich life-cycle model, which predicts that individuals expect to derive increasing marginal utility from reducing health risks that come to bear later in their lives. However, we also find that as individuals age, there appears to be a systematic downward shift in this schedule of marginal utility for risk reduction at future ages. Our model improves upon earlier work by differentiating between the respondent's current age and the future ages at which they would experience adverse health states. Using age-specific demand schedules, we simulate age-specific values for avoided future statistical health states for risk mitigation policies with various latency periods. Our empirical results contribute to the debate about whether a "senior death discount" should be employed in public policy-making with respect to health risks.