Donna Gilleskie

Donna Gilleskie, Assistant Professor of Economics at UNC-CH, is working with David Blau on a series of papers explaining the relationship among health, health insurance, and work behavior of older individuals using the new Health and Retirement Survey. Their first paper models the dynamic employment decisions regarding entry, exit, and job switching and allows for endogenous health insurance coverage in order to study the impact of health insurance that often serves to fill the gap between separation from an employer prior to age 65 and the availability of universal coverage (Medicare) at age 65. A second paper provides a more-detailed examination of the effects of multidimensional measures of health on the dynamic work transitions late in one's working life. A third paper (and the goal of this research) involves an exact solution of the dynamic programming problem that describes these employment decisions and estimation of the structural parameters of the theoretical model. Completion of this task will allow them to evaluate the effect of alternative policies regarding Medicare, Social Security, pension, and general health insurance coverage on employment behavior at older ages. A fourth paper extends the structural approach to the joint work and health insurance decisions of married couples.