Longevity Expectations and Death: Can People Predict Their Own Demise?
22 Pages Posted: 9 Oct 2000
Abstract
Using four waves of the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) this paper tests whether longevity expectations predict actual mortality at the individual level. The results suggest longevity expectations do predict mortality reasonably well. Serious health shocks and new activity limitations do reduce longevity expectations. Given one is prepared to accept that other unobserved causal factors have the same means for those who die and those who survive in each wave it is possible to test whether longevity expectations can serve as a sufficient statistic. The test findings imply that they do not appear to reflect all that individuals know about their personal odds of living to seventy-five.
JEL Classification: I12, J14, D80
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
The Predictive Validity of Subjective Probabilities of Survival
-
The Timing of Retirement: a Comparison of Expectations and Realizations
-
Individual Subjective Survival Curves
By Li Gan, Michael D. Hurd, ...
-
Anticipated and Actual Bequests
By Michael D. Hurd and James P. Smith
-
How Do the Elderly Form Expectations? an Analysis of Responses to New Information