Endogenous health groups and heterogeneous dynamics of the elderly
提出一种利用面板调查数据将老年人分为四个持久健康群体的方法，发现该分类比传统健康指标更能预测养老院入住、家庭护理、医疗支出和死亡率，并揭示不良健康的资产成本是自评健康的两倍。
Summary We propose a methodology to classify individuals into few but meaningful health groups by estimating a panel Markov switching model that exploits rich information from panel household surveys. Using the HRS, we identify four persistent health groups, depending on individual's physical and mental disabilities. Our classification outperforms existing health measures at explaining entry in nursing homes, home health care, out‐of‐pocket medical expenses, and mortality for individuals in the HRS, ELSA, and SHARE. Through a workhorse model of savings, we recover an asset cost of bad health that is twice as big as when using self‐reported health.