AN NBER PUBLICATION
ISSUE: No. 3, September 2008
The Bulletin on Aging & Health
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of age. While the original 1967 law covered workers aged 40 to 65, subsequent amendments first raised and then eliminated the upper age limit, ending mandatory retirement for nearly all workers.
How has the ADEA affected U.S. labor markets in the forty years since its passage? Is the ADEA well positioned to meet the challenge of population aging in the coming decades? These...
Article
The U.S. spends more on health care than other wealthy nations - in 2006, health care expenditures were 15 percent of GDP in the U.S., compared to 11 percent in France and Germany, 10 percent in Canada, and 8 percent in the United Kingdom and Japan. Yet health outcomes in the U.S. are generally no better than those in other countries. This has led to concern that the U.S. health care system may be less efficient than those of other countries.
In "Is American Health Care...
Article
Researchers have long been interested in understanding how people make decisions about behaviors that have long-term consequences for their well-being, like saving or smoking. These decisions require individuals to consider how they value costs and benefits that occur in the future versus those in the present- for example, saving requires sacrificing consumption today in order to have higher consumption in the future. Economic theory predicts that the discount rate - the...