Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/286801 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Citation: 
[Journal:] The European Journal of Health Economics [ISSN:] 1618-7601 [Volume:] 22 [Issue:] 9 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Berlin, Heidelberg [Year:] 2021 [Pages:] 1393-1409
Publisher: 
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
This paper asks whether marriage decisions of unmarried mature couples are driven by the prospect of financial advantages for the later widowed after one partner has suffered a serious health shock. We hypothesize that, in contrast to traditional marriage models, such health shocks may induce unmarried couples to obtain economic benefits, such as survivors’ pensions in particular, through marriage in advance of one partner’s death. This question has not yet been studied empirically. Hazard models capturing unobserved effects are applied to longitudinal data of the German Socioeconomic Panel. It turns out that the probability of marriage after male partners’ health shocks can increase significantly depending on the amount of expected survivors’ pensions for the (likely) surviving female partners. In contrast, an increased probability of marriage after health shocks to women (depending on the expected financial benefits to men) was not found. These findings are supported by various robustness checks. Economic and political implications are discussed and the results are placed in an international context.
Subjects: 
Health shock
Marriage
Survivor’s pension
Widow
Old-age poverty
Unobserved heterogeneity
Frailty
Hazard model
SOEP
Germany
JEL: 
C40
D10
H55
I10
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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