Journal of the Economics of Ageing最新文献

{"title":"Direct and spillover effects of long-term care insurance on Chinese elderly frailty","authors":"Lin Lin ,&nbsp;Min He ,&nbsp;Peng Nie","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100571","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100571","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Frailty has become a pressing public health concern within the elderly population. However, the extent to which long-term care insurance (LTCI) coverage can alleviate frailty among elderly beneficiaries is still insufficiently explored. Utilizing data from the 2011–2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and the city-by-city rollout of the LTCI program, this study examines the impact of China’s LTCI policy on the frailty of older beneficiaries and their spouses. Our findings reveal a statistically significant reduction in frailty among older beneficiaries three to five years after LTCI implementation. Moreover, these positive effects extend to spouses, as indicated by a decreased frailty index among them. Notably, the benefits are more pronounced among beneficiaries and spouses who are male, reside in rural areas, and have lower levels of education and consumption. The reduction in frailty is primarily attributed to enhanced subjective well-being and reduced financial strain among beneficiaries, rather than increased utilization of long-term care services.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100571"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144105357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Population aging, living arrangements, and inequality: The role of familial transfers in South Korea","authors":"Hyun Kyung Kim ,&nbsp;Sang-Hyop Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100577","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100577","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Many studies have shown that population aging leads to an increase in inequality because inequalities in income and consumption tend to increase with age. However, the effect of population aging on consumption inequality among the elderly may depend on the strength of the old-age support system, as transfers can reduce inequality. Although the role of public transfers has been widely examined, little is known about the role of familial transfers in reducing inequality. This study constructs National Inclusion Accounts (NIA) by using South Korea’s micro-level National Transfer Accounts (NTA) data by living arrangement and household income level and examines the role of familial transfers in the old-age support system and in reducing inequality. The results suggest that intergenerational familial transfers in extended households help to reduce consumption inequality among older people. By income level, older people in low-income households are more dependent on public transfers. Older people in high-income nuclear households rely more heavily on their own assets for consumption, and those in high-income extended households are more dependent on familial transfers. A counterfactual analysis suggests that consumption inequality among older people has increased over time in large part due to a rapid decline in extended households in South Korea.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100577"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144125371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The evolution of age-friendly jobs in a rapidly ageing economy","authors":"Hyeongsuk Kim ,&nbsp;Chulhee Lee ,&nbsp;Karen Eggleston","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100575","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100575","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Korea’s labor force shift toward older, female, and more educated workers has been even more dramatic than that of the US in recent decades. This paper documents how Korean job characteristics vary by age and characterizes the “age-friendliness” of Korean employment from 2000 to 2020 by applying the Age-Friendliness Index (AFI) developed by Acemoglu, Mühlbach and Scott to Korean occupational data. The AFI measures job characteristics—such as physical demands and job autonomy—based on occupational descriptions and worker preferences. Our primary empirical findings are that the age-friendliness of Korean jobs grew more slowly than in the US, and that older Koreans were not the main beneficiaries of these jobs. Both findings reflect the demographic, labor market, and institutional differences between Korea and the US. Slow growth of AFI can be partially explained by labor market rigidities, the role of large firms in Korea, and the flattening of managerial structures.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100575"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144070479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aging and work capacity","authors":"Italo Lopez Garcia ,&nbsp;Nicole Maestas ,&nbsp;Kathleen J. Mullen","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100576","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100576","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Declining health with age can limit individuals’ work capacity, increasing the likelihood of mismatch between their abilities to perform certain tasks and the minimum demands of the jobs available to them. Traditional measures of health status are insufficient for understanding how labor supply outcomes are influenced by the match between individuals’ abilities and job demands. We use unique survey data on individuals’ self-reported ability levels, harmonized with occupational ability requirements from the O*NET database, to develop a new measure of work capacity. We find that average abilities overall and across different domains are high relative to average occupational demands. At the same time, age-related declines in abilities are modest, at least through age 70. Putting these elements together, individuals’ work capacity is relatively stable with age. Finally, we show that our measures of work capacity are predictive of current and expected future labor supply outcomes, with and without controls for standard health variables.</div><div>This research was supported by grant number UM19-02 from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) through the Michigan Retirement and Disability Research Center (MRDRC) and by grant number R01AG056239 from the National Institute on Aging. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not represent the opinions or policy of SSA or any agency of the federal government. We thank Kate Bent, John Pencavel, seminar participants at the Tinbergen Institute, Tilburg University, Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, Erasmus University, KU Leuven, UQAM, the University of Chile and USC, and participants of the 2019 MRDRC Workshop, 2019 Retirement and Disability Research Consortium Conference, 2020 Stanford Working Longer Conference, 2022 CIPHER conference, 2024 Society of Labor Economists Annual Meeting, 2024 American Society of Health Economists Annual Conference, 2024 London Economics of Longevity and Ageing Conference, and the 2024 Association for Public Policy Analysis &amp; Management Fall Research Conference for helpful comments and suggestions, and Michael Jetsupphasuk, Patrick Rhatigan and David Zingher for excellent research assistance. The data used in this article are available online at <span><span>https://alpdata.rand.org/</span><svg><path></path></svg></span>.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100576"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144105358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aging and age selectivity: Exploring differences across time and space","authors":"Sergei Scherbov ,&nbsp;Warren C. Sanderson","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100574","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100574","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper uses the methodology of the Characteristics Approach to the study of population aging to produce a framework in which population aging is consistently measured from both a cross-sectional and longitudinal perspective. To do this, it introduces the Retrospective Survival Age Threshold (RSAT) to complement the existing Prospective Old-Age Threshold (POAT). The Prospective Old-Age Threshold (POAT) is the forward-looking age at which remaining life expectancy is 15 years. The Retrospective Survival Age Threshold (RSAT) is a backward-looking age reflecting the age by which 79 % of adults (20 + ) have survived. These complementary thresholds, when used together, illuminate variations in trajectories of aging across different mortality regimes. Drawing on national and global data, we show that some countries exhibit parallel movement of POAT and RSAT (implying the expansion of the survival curve), while others display divergent trends linked to shifts in midlife mortality (often implying compression of the survival curve). Our results underscore how combining forward-looking and backward-looking ages can provide richer insights into aging processes than using chronological age alone.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100574"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144089450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ageing and the allocation of time among older Americans","authors":"Maddalena Ferranna","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100572","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100572","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using longitudinal time use data from the Consumption and Activities Mail Survey of the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, the paper examines changes in time allocation as individuals grow older and transition to retirement. Accounting for individual observed and unobserved heterogeneity, I find that time spent on personal care and leisure sharply increases with age, while time spent on home production does not significantly vary with age, except for a small increase around retirement ages. Transition from working to retirement is associated with more time spent on all non-work activities. However, the relative allocation of non-market time across various activities does not substantially vary when people retire, thereby suggesting continuity in habits and behaviors. A large share of the time used for paid work is re-allocated to watching TV, while physical leisure does not increase after retirement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100572"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143948689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Early retirement provision for elderly displaced workers","authors":"Herman Kruse ,&nbsp;Andreas S. Myhre","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100569","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100569","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines the effects of providing early retirement (ER) benefits to displaced workers with limited labor market opportunities at old age. An age-cutoff in eligibility for ER benefits in Norway, which we exploit using a regression discontinuity design, facilitates our study. We utilize detailed Norwegian matched employer–employee data containing information on bankruptcies occurring between 2001–2010 to identify job displacements, along with data on individual income, wealth, pensions, and social security benefits to examine behavioral effects of ER provision and the associated implications for welfare and policy. While we are unable to detect any distortionary effect on labor supply, we detect that those who lose ER eligibility substitute 69 percent of their lost benefits through uptake of other social security benefits, with 51 percentage points attributed to disability insurance and 13 percentage points to unemployment insurance. Applying the Baily–Chetty formula for optimal social security, we show that ER provision is a suboptimal policy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100569"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143923911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Navigating healthcare for older adults after a chronic illness diagnosis: Evidence from China","authors":"Yuanyuan Ma ,&nbsp;Wenyuan Zheng ,&nbsp;Zhiyong Huang","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100568","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100568","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Chronic illnesses require lifelong medical treatment and significantly impact healthcare utilization. Newly diagnosed individuals often face challenges in navigating decisions between inpatient care, outpatient care, and self-care. This study examines the effects of chronic illness diagnosis on healthcare utilization among middle-aged and older adults using nationally representative longitudinal data from China. Using an event study approach, we find that a diagnosis leads to significant increases in inpatient and outpatient service use, as well as self-medication. Over time, reliance on inpatient care and self-medication intensifies. Healthcare access and affordability play a critical role, with individuals in low cost-sharing programs experiencing higher expenditures. Supplemental insurance plans are associated with lower inpatient service use, while cashless payment settlement is linked to higher inpatient utilization. Better access to primary healthcare reduces inpatient service use and overall healthcare expenditures, underscoring the gatekeeping role of primary care.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100568"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143865057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Evaluating the relationship between income, survival and loss of autonomy among older Canadians","authors":"Marie Connolly ,&nbsp;Marie-Louise Leroux ,&nbsp;Akakpo Domefa Konou","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100564","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100564","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Evaluating the relationship between health at old age and income is key for the design of equitable public policies targeted toward the elderly. While the health economics literature studying the relationship between income and survival is abundant, the literature studying the relationship between income and the risks to become dependent is still quite scarce. Using 2016 Canadian survey data on adults aged between 50 and 70, we find that income and the (objective and subjective) probability to live to age 85 are positively related while income and the (objective and subjective) probability to suffer from ADL limitations are negatively related. We also find that while the objective probability to enter a nursing home is negatively correlated with income, the subjective probability is positively correlated with income. Our results call for important policy recommendations. Poorer individuals are those who are more likely to become dependent and as such, long-term care (LTC) public policies should primarily be targeted toward them. This would generate a double benefit: first, by reducing the expected cost of dependency for those who would have more difficulty to pay for LTC expenditures and second, by fostering redistribution and decreasing income inequalities across the elderly.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100564"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143917605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Growing old in rural America: Measuring late-life health and economic well-being","authors":"Yuulin An ,&nbsp;Sayorn Chin ,&nbsp;Ray Miller","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100565","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100565","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We estimate well-being among older rural Americans with an expected utility framework and simulations using longitudinal data spanning nearly 30 years from the Health and Retirement Study. At age sixty, we find mean rural consumption expenditures of $24,105, a retirement probability of 53%, and a remaining life expectancy of 20.3 years for the cohort born 1931–36. When adjusting life expectancy for living in poor health, we obtain an age sixty quality adjusted life expectancy (QALE) of only 15.4 years. Our welfare metric suggests well-being among rural residents who report loneliness is only about half that of the non-lonely rural residents—largely driven by substantial consumption and QALE gaps. We also document substantial regional variation in rural well-being. Moreover, we find that older rural Americans are generally falling further behind older urban Americans across birth cohorts. Most of this widening gap is driven by declining relative consumption and wealth as opposed to health.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100565"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143870813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}