Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Typically, people focus on how severe diseases affect their health. Clearly, however, poor health also can affect people’s income as well as some disease makes holding a job difficult or impossible. Even people in good health with serious diseases may lower income if they need to miss work frequently for frequent doctor’s appointments. In fact,…
Almost 7 out of every 10 of individuals living to age 65 will require some long-term care (LTC) assistance. Of these, over one-third will spend some time in a nursing home. In general, however, the elderly strongly prefer home based LTC if possible. “Mattimore and colleagues (1997) found that 30% of elderly survey respondents would…
Many economists have lamented that income inequality has grown over recent decades. Although it is true that wage inequality has increased, compensation inequality may not have. When I mention “compensation inequality,” I refer to the total package of compensation that a worker receives. This includes wages, health insurance, 401(k) benefits, and other non-wage forms of…
The WSJ Real Time Economics blog reviews a paper by Michael Lechner which finds that “sports-playing adults saw a boost in income of about 1,200 euros per year over 16 years when compared to their less active peers. That translates into a 5-10% rate of return on sports activities, roughly equal to the benefit of…