TY - JOUR AU - Yogo,Motohiro TI - Portfolio Choice in Retirement: Health Risk and the Demand for Annuities, Housing, and Risky Assets JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 15307 PY - 2009 Y2 - September 2009 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15307 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15307.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Motohiro Yogo Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Research Department 90 Hennepin Avenue Minneapolis, MN 55401-1804 Tel: 612/204-6476 E-Mail: yogo@minneapolisfed.org AB - This paper develops a life-cycle model in which a household faces stochastic health depreciation and chooses consumption, health expenditure, and the allocation of its wealth between bonds, stocks, and housing. The model is calibrated to explain the cross-sectional variation and the joint dynamics of health expenditure, health, and wealth for females, aged 65 or older, in the Health and Retirement Study. The calibrated model implies that the welfare gain from relaxing borrowing constraints on home equity is 5 percent of wealth at age 65. Similarly, the welfare gain from private annuitization is 16 percent of wealth at age 65. ER -