The Effects of Health Insurance and Self-Insurance on Retirement Behavior

Abstract

\tThis paper presents and estimates a dynamic programming model model of retirement behavior that accounts explicitly for the effects of health cost volatility and and health insurance on retirement behavior. The model includes a savings decision so that we are able to analyze whether self-insurance is an important mechanism for understanding how greatly individuals value health insurance. We present preliminary estimates from the Health and Retirement Survey. We find that the possibility of self-insurance significantly lessens an individual's valuation of health insurance. Therefore, failure to account for self-insurance potentially leads to overestimates of the effect of health insurance and Medicare on retirement behavior.