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Accounting for the Rise of Health Spending and Longevity

Author

Listed:
  • Raquel Fonseca
  • Pierre-Carl Michaud
  • Arie Kapteyn
  • Titus Galama
Abstract
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.

Suggested Citation

  • Raquel Fonseca & Pierre-Carl Michaud & Arie Kapteyn & Titus Galama, 2013. "Accounting for the Rise of Health Spending and Longevity," Cahiers de recherche 1326, CIRPEE.
    • Handle: RePEc:lvl:lacicr:1326
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Demand for health; life cycle; health spending; technology; insurance; longevity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General
    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

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