The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Expectations, Life Expectancy, and Economic Behavior
Abstract
The formation of individuals' horizons, which is central to the theory of life-cycle behavior, has been completely neglected. This is especially surprising, since the life expectancy of adults has recently increased rapidly in Western countries. This study analyzes responses to a questionnaire designed to elicit subjective expectations and probabilities of survival. People do extrapolate past improvements in longevity when they determine their subjective horizons, and they are fully aware of levels of and movements within today's life tables. The subjective distribution has greater variance than its actuarial counterpart; and the subjective variance decreases with age. The implications of these findings for optimal Social Security, for the construction of annuities, for the analysis of savings behavior, and for evaluating lifetime earnings are discussed.
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Citations
Cited by
The Predictive Validity of Subjective Probabilities of Survival
Hurd, M. D., & McGarry, K. (2002) · The Economic Journal · doi:10.1111/1468-0297.00065 · Cited by 499
Death and Taxes: Longer life, consumption, and social security
Lee, R., & Tuljapurkar, S. (1997) · Demography · doi:10.2307/2061660 · Cited by 62
Metadata
- Authors
- Hamermesh, D. S.
- Venue
- The Quarterly Journal of Economics
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1985-05
- Volume
- 100
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 389
- ISSN
- 0033-5533 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2098407032
- Cited by
- 334
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 7.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Hamermesh, D. S. (1985). Expectations, Life Expectancy, and Economic Behavior. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. https://doi.org/10.2307/1885388
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
