Why do the Elderly Save? The Role of Medical Expenses

Mariacristina De Nardi, Eric French, John Bailey Jones

NBER Working Paper No. 15149
Issued in July 2009

---- Acknowledgements -----

An older and less complete version of this paper was previously circulated under the title "Differential Mortality, Uncertain Medical Expenses, and the Saving of Elderly Singles". We thank for helpful comments and suggestions Jerome Adda, Kartik Athreya, Gadi Barlevy, Marco Bassetto, Marco Cagetti, Jeff Campbell, Chris Carroll, Michael Hurd, Nicola Pavoni, Luigi Pistaferri, Victor Rios-Rull, Tom Sargent, Karl Scholz, and seminar participants at many institutions. Olga Nartova, Kenley Pelzer, Phil Doctor, Charles Doss, and Annie Fang Yang provided excellent research assistance. Mariacristina De Nardi: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and NBER. Eric French: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. John Bailey Jones: University at Albany, SUNY. De Nardi gratefully acknowledges financial support from NSF grant SES-0317872. Jones gratefully acknowledges financial support from NIA grant 1R03AG026299. French thanks the Social Security Administration for hospitality while writing the paper. The views of this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Federal Reserve System, the Social Security Administration, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute on Aging, or the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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