Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/186077 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Citation: 
[Journal:] Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics [ISSN:] 2235-6282 [Volume:] 153 [Issue:] 4 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Heidelberg [Year:] 2017 [Pages:] 371-401
Publisher: 
Springer, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
Widowhood and retirement change the economie environment of elderly households. While retirement changes income and expenditure patterns, widowhood fundamentally changes the structure of the household. Besides high non-monetary cost of losing the partner, resources are no longer shared and economies of scale arising from joint consumption are lost. This paper applies a collective household model to expenditure data on elderly households in Switzerland. The findings suggest that 44% of household resources are assigned to wives and both spouses save roughly 27% or, on average, 800 Swiss Francs on monthly expenditures relative to living apart. Estimates of indifference scales indicate that men suffer a financial loss after losing their wife, while widowed women do not.
Subjects: 
Collective household model
indifference scale
resource shares
economies of scale in consumption
Engel curves
elderly households
JEL: 
D12
D13
C30
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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