Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Household Portfolio Choices, Health Status And Health Care Systems: A Cross-Country Analysis Based On Share, Vincenzo Atella, Brunetti Marianna, Nicole Maestas

Nicole Maestas

Health risk is increasingly viewed as an important form of background risk that affects household portfolio decisions. However, its role might be mediated by the presence of a protective full-coverage National Health System that could reduce households’ probability of incurring current and future out-of-pocket medical expenditures. In this paper, we first sketch a theoretical framework in which household portfolio decisions are a function of both individual and systemic characteristics. Then, we test its main implications based on SHARE data, studying the influence of current health status and future health risk on the decision to hold risky assets, across 10 European …