Retirement age and health expenditures

Helmuth Cremer (1, 2) , Jean-Marie Lozachmeur (1) , Pierre Pestieau (3, 4, 5, 6)

1 GREMAQ - Groupe de recherche en économie mathématique et quantitative
2 IDEI - Institut d'Economie Industrielle
3 PJSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques
4 CREPP - Center of Research in Public Economics and Population Economics
5 CORE - Center of Operation Research and Econometrics [Louvain]
6 CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research

We study the design of pension benefits and contributions when an individual's health status depends on his consumption of health services. Health services can be subsidized and their uniform public provision is also considered. We show that the second-best policy induces early retirement and that health expenditures ought to be subsidized under plausible assumptions. When only linear subsidies are available, the case for uniform public provision of health services appears to be quite strong.

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Economics and Finance

Helmuth Cremer, Jean-Marie Lozachmeur, Pierre Pestieau. Retirement age and health expenditures. Annales d'Economie et de Statistique, 2006, 83-84, pp.167-185. ⟨halshs-00754144⟩