TY  - JOUR
AU  - Gan, Li
AU  - Hurd, Michael
AU  - McFadden, Daniel
TI  - Individual Subjective Survival Curves
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9480
PY  - 2003
Y2  - February 2003
DO  - 10.3386/w9480
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9480
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9480.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Li Gan
Department of Economics
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4228
Tel: 979/862-1667
Fax: 979/847-8747
E-Mail: ganli@tamu.edu

Michael D. Hurd
RAND Corporation
1776 Main Street
Santa Monica, CA 90407
Tel: 310/451-6945
Fax: 310/451-6923
E-Mail: mhurd@rand.org

Daniel L. McFadden
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Economics
508-1 Evans Hall #3880
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
Tel: (510) 643-8428
Fax: (510) 642-0638
E-Mail: mcfadden@econ.berkeley.edu
M1  - published as Li Gan, Michael D. Hurd, Daniel L. McFadden. "Individual Subjective Survival Curves," in David A. Wise, editor, "Analyses in the Economics of Aging" University of Chicago Press (2005)

AB  - Testing life-cycle models and other economic models of saving and consumption at micro level requires knowledge of individuals' subjective believes of their mortality risk. Previous studies have shown that individual responses on subjective survival probabilities are generally consistent with life tables. However, survey responses suffer serious problems caused by focal responses of zero and one. This paper suggests using a Bayesian update model that accounts for the problems encountered in focal responses. We also propose models that help us to identify how much each individual deviates from life table in her subjective belief.  The resulting individual subjective survival curves have considerable variations and are readily applicable in testing economic models that require individual subjective life expectancies.
ER  -