Abstract
Do wealth shocks affect the health of elderly in developed countries? I exploit the booms and busts in the US stock market as a natural experiment that generated considerable gains and losses in the wealth of stock-holding retirees. Using data from the 1998-2011 Health and Retirement Study, I construct wealth shocks as the interaction of stock holdings with stock market changes. These wealth shocks predict wealth changes and strongly affect health outcomes. A 10 percent wealth loss leads to an impairment of 2-3 percent of a standard deviation in physical health, mental health, and survival rates.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 349-377 |
| Number of pages | 29 |
| Journal | American Economic Journal: Applied Economics |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 1 2018 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Economics, Econometrics and Finance
Access to Document
Other files and links
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Wealth shocks and health outcomes: Evidence from stock market fluctuations'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Datasets
-
Replication data for: Wealth Shocks and Health Outcomes: Evidence from Stock Market Fluctuations
Schwandt, H. (Creator), ICPSR - Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2018
DOI: 10.3886/e116337v1, https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/116337/version/V1/view
Dataset