Mortality Contingent Claims, Health Care, and Social Insurance / Tomas Philipson, Gary S. Becker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Philipson, Tomas.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Becker, Gary S.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w5760.

NBER working paper series no. w5760

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1996.

Summary:

This paper analyzes the savings and health care impacts of mortality contingent claims, defined here as income measures, such as annuities and life-insurance, under which earned income is contingent on the length of one's life. The postwar increase in mandatory annuity and life-insurance programs, as well as the rapid increase in life-expectancy, motivates a better understanding of the effects that mortality contingent claims have on resources devoted to life-extension. We analyze the incentives that such claims imply for life-extension when resources may affect mortality endogenously and argue that these incentives dramatically alter the standard conclusions obtained when mortality is treated exogenously.

Notes:

Print version record

September 1996.