[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mrr/papers/wp065.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Medicare Gaps and Widow Poverty

Author

Listed:
  • Kathleen McGarry

    (University of California, Los Angeles and NBER)

  • Robert F. Schoeni

    (University of Michigan)

Abstract
Several categories of medical expenditures are not covered by Medicare, including prescription drugs, most nursing home stays, and extended hospital visits. Out-of-pocket costs for these items can be substantial, and what’s more, they are likely to be concentrated at the end of life. At the same time, it is well documented that poverty is 3-4 times more common among widows than among similarly aged married women. This study examines the potential link between these two phenomena, asking the question: to what extent do out-of-pocket health care costs of a dying spouse affect the financial position of the survivor? We find that out-of-pocket medical spending increases substantially just prior to death, and that these expenditures are large relative to income for a large share of elderly couples. Simulations investigate the extent to which expansions in insurance coverage to include nursing home care or prescription drug coverage could improve the financial well-being of the surviving spouse.

Suggested Citation

  • Kathleen McGarry & Robert F. Schoeni, 2003. "Medicare Gaps and Widow Poverty," Working Papers wp065, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:mrr:papers:wp065
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://mrdrc.isr.umich.edu/publications/Papers/pdf/wp065.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:max:cprpbr:002 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Hurd, Michael D. & McGarry, Kathleen, 1997. "Medical insurance and the use of health care services by the elderly," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 129-154, April.
    3. David R. Weir & Robert J. Willis & Purvi A. Sevak, 2002. "The Economic Consequences of Widowhood," Working Papers wp023, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    4. Hurd, Michael D, 1990. "Research on the Elderly: Economic Status, Retirement, and Consumption and Saving," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 28(2), pages 565-637, June.
    5. Amy Finkelstein & Kathleen McGarry, 2003. "Private Information and its Effect on Market Equilibrium: New Evidence from Long-Term Care Insurance," NBER Working Papers 9957, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tilman Brück & Kati Schindler, 2008. "The Impact of Conflict and Fragility on Households: A Conceptual Framework with Reference to Widows," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2008-83, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Lois B. Shaw, 2006. "Differing Prospects For Women and Men: Young Old-Age, Old Old-Age, and Elder Care," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_464, Levy Economics Institute.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hanming Fang & Michael P. Keane & Dan Silverman, 2008. "Sources of Advantageous Selection: Evidence from the Medigap Insurance Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(2), pages 303-350, April.
    2. Cherchye, Laurens & De Rock, Bram & Vermeulen, Frederic, 2012. "Economic well-being and poverty among the elderly: An analysis based on a collective consumption model," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 985-1000.
    3. Angela Lyons & Hyungsoo Kim, 2007. "No Pain, No Strain: Impact of Health on the Financial Security of Older Americans," NFI Working Papers 2007-WP-12, Indiana State University, Scott College of Business, Networks Financial Institute.
    4. Kristian Bolin & Daniel Hedblom & Anna Lindgren & Bjorn Lindgren, 2010. "Asymmetric Information and the Demand for Voluntary Health Insurance in Europe," NBER Working Papers 15689, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Joan Costa-Font & Montserrat Costa-Font, 2011. "Explaining Optimistic Old Age Disability and Longevity Expectations," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 104(3), pages 533-544, December.
    6. Gruber, Jonathan & Madrian, Brigitte C, 1995. "Health-Insurance Availability and the Retirement Decision," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(4), pages 938-948, September.
    7. Maria Casanova-Rivas, 2008. "Dynamic Complementarities: A Computational and Empirical Analysis of Couples' Retirement Decisions," 2008 Meeting Papers 1073, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Elder, Harold W. & Rudolph, Patricia M., 2000. "Beliefs and actions: expectations and savings decisions by older Americans," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 33-45, 00.
    9. van de Walle, Dominique, 2011. "Lasting welfare effects of widowhood in a poor country," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5734, The World Bank.
    10. Goda, Gopi Shah & Ramnath, Shanthi & Shoven, John B. & Slavov, Sita Nataraj, 2018. "The financial feasibility of delaying Social Security: evidence from administrative tax data," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(4), pages 419-436, October.
    11. Amy Finkelstein & James Poterba, 2004. "Adverse Selection in Insurance Markets: Policyholder Evidence from the U.K. Annuity Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(1), pages 183-208, February.
    12. Bernardo Lanza Queiroz, 2007. "The determinants of male retirement in urban Brazil," Nova Economia, Economics Department, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil), vol. 17(1), pages 11-36, January-A.
    13. Akanksha Srivastava & Sanjay Mohanty, 2012. "Poverty Among Elderly in India," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 109(3), pages 493-514, December.
    14. Pierre Pestieau & Gregory Ponthiere, 2012. "The Public Economics of Increasing Longevity," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 200(1), pages 41-74, March.
    15. Courtney Coile & Jonathan Gruber, 2007. "Fiscal Effects of Social Security Reform in the United States," NBER Chapters, in: Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: Fiscal Implications of Reform, pages 503-532, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. James P. Smith, 2004. "New Directions in Socioeconomic Research on Aging," Labor and Demography 0403016, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Gokhale, Jagadeesh & Kotlikoff, Laurence J. & Sefton, James & Weale, Martin, 2001. "Simulating the transmission of wealth inequality via bequests," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 93-128, January.
    18. Hugo Benítez-Silva & José Ignacio García-Pérez & Sergi Jiménez-Martín, 2014. "Reforming the U.S. Social Security system accounting for employment uncertainty," Economics Working Papers 1455, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    19. Greenstone, Michael & Gayer, Ted, 2009. "Quasi-experimental and experimental approaches to environmental economics," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 21-44, January.
    20. repec:use:tkiwps:2323 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Papyrakis, Elissaios & Parcero, Osiris Jorge, 2022. "The psychology of mineral wealth: Empirical evidence from Kazakhstan," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mrr:papers:wp065. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MRRC Administrator (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isumius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.