TY  - JOUR
AU  - Philipson,Tomas
AU  - Becker,Gary S.
TI  - Mortality Contingent Claims, Health Care, and Social Insurance
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5760
PY  - 1996
Y2  - September 1996
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5760
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5760.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Tomas Philipson
Irving B. Harris Graduate School
of Public Policy Studies
University of Chicago
1155 E. 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/502-7773
E-Mail: t-philipson@uchicago.edu

Gary Becker
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL   60637
Tel: 312/702-8254
E-Mail: gbecker@uchicago.edu
AB  - This paper analyzes the savings and health care impacts of mortality contingent claims, defined here as income measures, such as annuities and life-insurance, under which earned income is contingent on the length of one's life.  The postwar increase in mandatory annuity and life-insurance programs, as well as the rapid increase in life-expectancy, motivates a better understanding of the effects that mortality contingent claims have on resources devoted to life-extension.  We analyze the incentives that such claims imply for life-extension when resources may affect mortality endogenously and argue that these incentives dramatically alter the standard conclusions obtained when mortality is treated exogenously.
ER  -