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One of the most well-established relationships in the economics of aging is that between health and wealth. Yet this relationship is also changing in conjunction with a rapidly aging population as well as a broad evolution in how people live later in life. Building on findings from earlier editions in the National Bureau of Economic Research series, this book focuses on the changing financial circumstances of the elderly, and the relationship of these circumstances to health and health care. Among the topics addressed are the significance of out-of-pocket health care costs, the effects of inflation on social security, and the impact of the recent financial crisis on Americans' well-being. Encompassing new data and advances in research methodology, the developments presented in the book will have implications for economies worldwide.

This volume marks thirty years since the inception of the NBER program on aging, and is the sixteenth in a series of NBER volumes that highlight economics of aging research. When the program began, the baby boom generation was in their 20s and 30s, and life expectancy at older ages was nearly three years shorter than it is today. Today, the leading edge of the baby boom generation is entering their 70s. Many are retiring from paid work, yet they are living longer than ever. Their health and financial wellbeing are shaped by individual decisions people made through the life course; as well as by unanticipated events, economic conditions, medical innovations, and a rapidly evolving landscape of policy incentives and supports. What is most apparent from the mass of research conducted through the program over the years is how integrally related are the multiple dimensions of people’s wellbeing. The current volume is organized in three sections, corresponding to three aspects of wellbeing: financial, physical and emotional. The first four chapters look at factors relating to people’s financial circumstances in later life, such as saving, homeownership, and the use of accumulated assets in retirement. The next five chapters in the volume focus on health and disability. The last two chapters explore issues in mental health, emotional wellbeing, life satisfaction, or happiness.

This book provides a massive amount of new research on several popular and less-examined topics pertaining to the relationship between economics and aging. Among the many themes explored in this volume, considerable attention is given to new research on retirement savings, the cost and efficiency of medical resources, and the predictors of health events. The volume begins with a discussion of the risks and merits of 401(k) plans. Subsequent chapters present recent analysis of the growth of Medicare costs; the different aspects of disability; and the evolution of health, wealth, and living arrangements over the life course. Keeping with the global tradition of previous volumes, the book also includes comparative studies on savings behavior in Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States; an examination of household savings among different age groups in Germany; and a chapter devoted to population aging and the plight of widows in India.

The societal impact of aging baby boomers is compounded by longer life expectancies, which have risen continually over many decades. The implications of these demographic trends are extensive and significant, yet they are just one part of the rapidly changing landscape of aging in the United States and around the world. The impact of the financial crisis and its continuing ramifications have emerged as key concerns, adding to the fiscal challenges of government, and complicating people's financial planning for later life. This is the fifteenth in a series of NBER volumes synthesizing analyses of economics of aging research. The large majority of this research has been funded by the National Institute on Aging, which has made a longterm commitment to advancing the economics of aging field. A particular focus of the research reported in this volume deals with health, and its relationship to financial wellbeing. Health is perhaps the most essential aspect of what constitutes wellbeing as we age, affects one's ability to work at older ages, and is strongly associated with financial wellbeing. Additionally, health has societal implications, such as for labor markets, government finances and health care costs. Also emphasized in the volume is the potential for interventions and policy changes to improve health and wellbeing, using approaches that may be implemented throughout this system of health-related interactions.

This is the seventh phase of an ongoing project on international social security which compares twelve developed countries’ experiences and uses differences in their retirement program provisions to explore their effects on retirement and related questions. This volume explores whether older people are healthy enough to work longer using two main methods. We ask how much older individuals today could work if they worked as much as those with the same mortality rate in the past, or as younger individuals in similar health. Both methods suggest there is significant additional health capacity to work at older ages. A third method based on improvements in self-assessed health (SAH) over time could only be implemented in certain countries, and the results were mixed. For most countries, there was a strong education gradient in the incidence of poor health. Some countries showed health improvements as measured by SAH, though these gains may be larger for higher education quartiles. The methods suggest that older men have substantial additional capacity to work beyond current employment levels. We emphasize that our concept of the health capacity to work is not intended to suggest how long people should work nor to suggest what typical retirement ages should be in various countries. There may be impediments to working longer, such as weak labor demand, but health capacity to work can be important in considering whether increases in retirement ages might be constrained by older workers’ health. The results of this phase suggest that this is not the case.

The baby boom generation's entry into old age has led to an unprecedented increase in the elderly population. The social and economic effects of this shift are significant, and in this book, a group of leading researchers takes an eclectic view of the subject. Among the broad topics discussed are work and retirement behavior, disability, and their relationship to the structure of retirement and disability policies. While choices about when to retire are made by individuals, these decisions are influenced by a set of incentives, including retirement benefits and health care, and this volume includes cross-national analyses of the effects of such programs on these decisions. Furthermore, the volume also offers in-depth analysis of the effects of retirement plans, employer contributions, and housing prices on retirement. It explores well-established relationships among economic circumstances, health, and mortality, as well as the effects of poverty and lower levels of economic development on health and life satisfaction. By combining micro and macro evidence, this volume continues a tradition of expanding the research agenda on the economics of aging.