Long-term care insurance: an essential employee benefit

Growing numbers of employers are embracing long-term care insurance (LTCI) as an important new addition to their employee benefits package due to aging baby boomers, tax favorable legislation, the need for employee retention and rising costs of care. Even the best retirement plans can be gutted by the high costs of long-term care. The authors identify key components of LTCI and offer guidelines for selecting an LTCI company.     

Long-term care insurance matures as a benefit

Forty-eight percent of U.S. businesses now offer long-term care insurance (LTCI) coverage, an increase of 15% since 1998. As more organizations realize the added value of LTCI in the employee benefit package, they have also found that motivation to buy varies with employee financial standing, gender and age, and that targeted employee education as part of retirement planning is essential.     

Parental Wealth and the Black–White Mobility Gap in the U.S.

Utilizing longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), this paper examines the relationship between parental wealth and intergenerational income mobility for black and white families. I find that total parental wealth is positively associated with upward mobility for low‐income white families, but is not associated with reduced likelihood of downward mobility for white families from the top half of the income distribution. Conversely, I find that total parental wealth does not have the same positive association for low‐income black families, while home ownership may have negative associations with the likelihood of upward mobility for these families. However, for black families from the top half of the income distribution, home equity is associated with a decreased likelihood of downward mobility, suggesting a heterogeneous relationship between home ownership and mobility for black families.     

Integrating contributory elder-care benefits with voluntary long-term care insurance programs

Caregiving for aging parents or other disabled family members takes a heavy toll on work and family life, as well as the company bottom line. Research reveals that the two primary responses to elder-care issues in the workplace are employer-paid consultation and referral programs, and employee-paid long-term care insurance (LTCI) plans.     

RETIREMENT INCOME RIGHTS AS A COMPONENT OF WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES*

Americans have accumulated a considerable amount of future purchasing power in the form of Social Security and employer pension rights. These rights are a form of wealth. In this paper, we ask how their inclusion alters the wealth portfolios of a sample of Americans at or nearing normal retirement age. Data from the 1973 wave of the longitudinal Retirement History Study suggest that, for many Americans, retirement income rights are the dominant component of wealth, and are often more important than all other entries combined, including home equity. We also find that this wealth can be seriously eroded during times of high inflation. Because of differences in marketability, pension and Social Security rights are not perfect substitutes for more liquid assets. Nonetheless, since they are so large in magnitude, and have been shown to be key determinants of the behavior of older workers, they should not be ignored.     

Wealth Inequality and Asset Pricing

In an Arrow–Debreu exchange economy with identical agents except for their initial endowment, we examine how wealth inequality affects the equilibrium level of the equity premium and the risk-free rate. We first show that wealth inequality raises the equity premium if and only if the inverse of absolute risk aversion is concave in wealth. We then show that the equilibrium risk-free rate is reduced by wealth inequality if the inverse of the coefficient of absolute prudence is concave. We also prove that the combination of a small uninsurable background risk with wealth inequality biases asset pricing towards a larger equity premium and a smaller risk-free rate.     

Complex home care: Part 2- family annual income, insurance premium, and out-of-pocket expenses

Annual costs paid by families for intravenous infusion of home parenteral nutrition (HPN) health insurance premiums, deductibles, co-payments for health services, and the wide range of out-of-pocket home health care expenses are significant. The costs of managing complex chronic care at home cannot be completely understood until all out-of-pocket costs have been defined, described, and tabulated. Non-reimbursed and out-of-pocket costs paid by families over years for complex chronic care negatively impact the financial stability of families. National health care reform must take into account the long-term financial burdens of families caring for those with complex home care. Any changes that may increase the out-of-pocket costs or health insurance costs to these families can also have a negative long-term impact on society when greater numbers of patients declare bankruptcy or qualify for medical disability.     

THE SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF HOUSEHOLD DISPOSABLE WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES

In this study, new estimates are presented of the size distribution of household wealth in the U.S. in 1969. Compared to previous studies, its major advance is the inclusion of all marketable or discretionary household assets and liabilities and their alignment with national balance sheet totals. Household disposable wealth (HDW) is defined as the sum of all marketable or fungible assets held by households less liabilities. The Gini coefficient for HDW is 0.72, the share held by the richest one percent of households is 31 percent, and the share held by the top five percent is 49 percent. There is, however, a large variation in the concentration of different household assets. The Gini coefficient is 0.30 for household durables and inventories, 0.69 for equity in owner-occupied housing, 0.94 for bonds and securities, and 0.98 for corporate stock. HDW is then divided into two mutually exclusive components. The first, called "life-cycle wealth," is defined as the sum of equity in owner-occupied housing, durables, household inventory, demand deposits and currency, and the cash value of life insurance and pensions less consumer debt. This form of wealth tends to be accumulated over the life-cycle for either consumption, liquidity, or retirement purposes. The second, called "capital wealth," is the sum of time and savings deposits, bonds and securities, corporate stock, business and investment real estate equity, and trust fund equity. Life-cycle wealth is substantially less concentrated than capital wealth. The Gini coefficient for it is 0.59, while that for capital wealth is 0.88. Moreover, among the lower wealth groups, over 80 percent of household wealth takes the form of life-cycle wealth, whereas among the top wealth groups the proportion is under 20 percent. The results suggest substantially different savings motivations between the two groups.     

DIFFERENCES IN THE MEASUREMENT OF WEALTH, WEALTH INEQUALITY AND WEALTH COMPOSITION OBTAINED FROM ALTERNATIVE U.S. WEALTH SURVEYS

Since household wealth surveys have been widely used to study saving and other issues, it is important to examine the reliability of the various survey estimates of wealth. In this paper the authors assess the quality characteristics of the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Men and the Retirement History Survey, as compared to the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances. We find that the NLS and especially the RHS underreport wealth and wealth concentration. The underestimates of wealth held in the form of common stock, business equity, and investment real estate equity are substantial. The principal problem lies in underrepresentation of both tails of the wealth and income distributions, with the consequences of underrepresenting the upper tail being especially serious for wealth measurement. We examine several potential reasons for the underrepresentation.     

上市公司股权激励的短期财富效应研究

2006年1月至2008年1月我国共有60多家上市公司采取了股权激励的方案。采用事件研究法对这些上市公司股权激励案例进行实证研究发现,在选定的时间窗口内,总样本的股权激励活动会引起显著的股东短期财富效应变化。分类研究发现,股票期权的激励形式引起的财富效应大于限制性股票的形式,但是,高比例的股权激励并不一定产生较高的财富效应。另外,成长性也是投资者关注的因素之一。成长性高的公司的股价上升幅度较成长性低的公司大。     

Equity risk premium and time horizon: What do the U.S. secular data say?

We consider a representative investor whose wealth is made up of the equity market portfolio and the riskless asset, and who maximizes the expected utility of his/her future wealth for a given horizon. The solution of this program shows that the equilibrium value of the equity risk premium – the latter being measured by the difference between the expected equity portfolio return and the risk-free interest rate – is given by the product of the price of risk by the expected variance of stock returns. When returns are predictable, these two magnitudes are both time-varying and horizon-dependent. In accordance with this theoretical framework, our paper presents an econometric model of the equity risk premia for two traditional horizons: the one-period-ahead horizon (i.e. the ‘short-term’ premium) and the infinite-time horizon (i.e. the ‘long-term’ premium). Using annual US secular data from 1871 to 2008, and representing the expected returns by mixing the three traditional adaptive, extrapolative and regressive processes, large disparities in the dynamics of the two premia are evidenced. Concerning the determination of the equilibrium values of the two premia, the expected variances depend on the past values of the centered squared returns while the prices of risk (unobservable variables) are estimated according to the Kalman filter methodology, which enables us to capture the influence of hidden variables and of non-directly measurable psychological effects. A spread of interest rates adds to this determination. Possibly due to risky arbitrage and transaction costs, the results show that observed premia gradually converge towards their equilibrium values, this process being described by an error correction model. Overall, our model provides a rather satisfactory representation of ‘short-term’ and ‘long-term’ premia.     

NEOCLASSICAL GROWTH AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF CONSUMPTION

Abstract.  The neoclassical growth model is used to compare an economy with growing per capita income with an economy with stationary per capita income, in terms of equity in distribution of consumption. The economies have the same initial conditions including the same initial wealth distribution. The outcome of the comparison depends on the nature of structural differences between the economies. Even with convergence in wealth distribution in the growing economy, the consumption distribution there may be less equitable and dynasties with least initial levels of wealth may be worse off than dynasties with same initial wealth levels in the stationary economy.     

援疆失能老年人居家长期照护选择原因分析

基于对新疆728名援疆汉族失能老年人的调查数据,应用Multinomial Logistics回归方法分析失能老年人选择居家长期照护的原因及影响因素。多数失能老年人受"恋家情结"的影响而选择在家中接受照护,其中性别、年龄、文化程度、来疆时间、来疆原因、失能时间及失能程度对失能老年人选择居家长期照护有显著的影响。     

Distributional consequences of asset price inflation in the Euro Area

We study the distributional consequences of housing price, bond price and equity price increases for Euro Area households using data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). The capital gains from bond price and equity price increases turn out to be concentrated among relatively few households, while the median household strongly benefits from housing price increases. The capital gains from bond price increases (relative to household net wealth) do not correlate with household net wealth (or income). Bond price increases thus leave net wealth inequality largely unchanged. In contrast, equity price increases largely benefit the top end of the net wealth (and income) distribution, thus amplify net wealth inequality. Housing price increases display a hump shaped pattern over the net wealth distribution, with the poorest and richest households benefitting least, but there exists considerable heterogeneity across Euro Area countries. The ECB's OMT announcements over the summer of 2012 had quantitatively similar distributional implications as an unexpected loosening of the policy rate by about 175 basis points.     

Inequality and equity in the distribution of income and wealth

Our contemporary concern for greater equality of share should be interpreted as part of a historical process, but, also, the validity of the pursuit must be evaluated in terms of the relevant trade-offs and in terms of the equity considerations of our capitalist ideology. With such a broad, but necessary, perspective, the question of (re) distribution becomes increasingly complex, and the link-s between equity and equality may be increasingly important to identify. However, the terms of the trade-offs may become increasingly difficult to evaluate, and ultimately, the questions of equality and equity in the distribution of income or wealth is not one of economics but of moral philosophy.     

Home care reimbursement,long-term care utilization,and health outcomes

Using a substantial change in Medicare reimbursement policy to study the market for home health care, I find that the introduction of tightly binding average per-patient reimbursement caps led to a large drop in the provision of home care, particularly to the least healthy beneficiaries. This decline in home health utilization was not offset by increases in institutional long-term care or other medical care and there were no associated adverse health consequences. However, approximately one-quarter of the decline in Medicare spending was offset by increases in out-of-pocket expenditures for home health care, with the offset concentrated in higher income populations.     

上市公司股权融资选择：私募还是公募?

本文对A股定向增发和公开增发分析后认为:就财务型股权融资而言,在老股东财富最大化原则下,在未来新项目净现值为正的情况下,股价高估的公司选择公开增发,股价低估的公司选择定向增发。定向增发方式可以缓解信息不对称带来的投资不足问题,可以解释公告后正的超额收益。     

The long run relationship between private consumption and wealth: common and idiosyncratic effects

We investigate the long run relationship between private consumption, disposable income and wealth approximated by equity and house price indices for a panel of 15 industrialized countries. Consumption, income and wealth are cointegrated in their common components. The impact of house prices exceeds the effect arising from equity wealth. The long run vector is broadly in line with the life cycle permanent income hypothesis, if house prices are allowed to enter the relationship. At the idiosyncratic level, a long run equilibrium is detected between consumption and income, i.e. the wealth variable can be excluded. The income elasticity in the idiosyncratic relationship is significantly less than unity. Hence, the presence of wealth effects in consumption equations arises from the international integration of asset markets and points to the relevance of risk sharing activities of agents. Without sufficient opportunities, an increase in national saving rates would be expected, leading to a lower path of private consumption expenditures.     

AUSTRALIA'S EQUITY HOME BIAS

This paper constructs the float adjusted measure of home bias and explores the determinants of Australia's equity home bias by employing the International Monetary Fund's high quality dataset (2001 to 2005) on cross border equity investment. On the empirical front, the paper conducts robustness tests by employing instrumental variables that are standard in the financial economics literature. The paper finds that the share of the number of firms listed in the domestic market and the share of internet users in the total population of the host country has a significant impact on equity home bias. Trade linkages are found to have a mixed impact on equity home bias. The paper also finds that the country's market share of the world market capitalisation and transaction costs do not impact Australia's equity home bias. Investors are found to exhibit low diversification motives.     

Subsidizing Child Care by Mothers at Home

Child care on a do-it-yourself basis by a parent would seem to be just as worthy of subsidization by government as nonparental care is. However, subsidies for care by a stay-at-home parent raise serious issues of equity between families with and without an adult at home full time. They also have the effect of reinforcing traditional gender roles, thus setting back the advances women have made in the workplace and society generally. Efficiency problems and administrative difficulties can also be cited. Long paid parental leaves have similar disadvantages associated with them.