Working papers:
[1.] "The Economics of Long-Term Care Transitions: Evidence from Linked Administrative Data", with Rob Alessie, Max Groneck and Raun van Ooijen. 2026.
Abstract: Using administrative data on Dutch residents aged 65+, we estimate a multistate duration model of transitions between independent living, home-based, and nursing home care to examine how family and financial resources shape lifetime long-term care (LTC) use and public expenditure. Informal care from a healthy partner delays institutional entry and increases returns home, while financial resources support remaining at home. A healthy partner reduces women’s lifetime LTC use by 25% and men’s by 50%, lowering public expenditure by €43,000-€47,000 per person. Child effects are modest. Cognitive impairments generate persistent dependence and roughly 2.5 times higher lifetime costs than physical impairments.
Presented at: 2nd Health Economics Workshop (2022), Copenhagen (Denmark); EuHEA Conference (2022), Oslo (Norway); Netspar International Pension Workshop (2023)
[2.] "Combining Longevity and Long-Term Care Risks: A Variance-Based Perspective", with Rob Alessie, Max Groneck and Raun van Ooijen. 2025 (Submitted).
Abstract: We study how combining longevity and long-term care (LTC) insurance affects heterogeneity in individual risks that underlie selection problems. Using comprehensive Dutch administrative data on more than three million people aged 65 and above, we find that longevity and LTC risks are negatively correlated by income and marital status but positively correlated across gender. Bundling reduces the variance in expected costs for singles and married men but increases it for married women and under uniform pricing. We show that a negative correlation between risks is a necessary but not sufficient condition for diversification: differences in the relative size and variability of each risk determine whether bundling mitigates or amplifies heterogeneity in expected costs.
Presented at: EEA Congress (2020), Virtual; Workshop on Longevity Risk, Differential Mortality and Lifetime Inequality (2018), Brescia (Italy).
Media coverage: Invited to write press summary for EEA congress 2020.
[3.] "Health inequalities and the progressivity of old-age social insurance programs", mimeo, with Max Groneck and Raun van Ooijen. 2024.
Abstract: A well-established negative correlation exists between lifetime income and health and mortality risk. We quantify the welfare implications of living longer and using less LTC by higher incomes, implying higher lifetime retirement income and lower lifetime LTC cost. To this end, we model singles' and couples' consumption and saving behavior throughout the life cycle. Households face uncertain labor income at working age and uncertain and heterogeneous health and mortality across socioeconomic groups, so precautionary savings will differ across these groups. In addition, we assume that households value living and giving bequests to their heirs, implying a potential saving motive for bequests. We estimate the parameters of the model using unique administrative data from the Netherlands. Old-age insurance programs for retirement and LTC provision result in a substantial redistribution of welfare due to socioeconomic inequalities in LTC needs and mortality. The welfare effect amounts to 23.4% additional consumption after age 65 for the income-rich compared to those in the bottom lifetime income quartile. A large part of 22.2pp of the welfare gain for the richer households is explained by their strong preferences for leaving bequests: they have lower co-payments for LTC and more retirement income, which they spend on leaving a larger bequest upon death.
Presented at: European Workshop on Econometrics and Health Economics (2024, Upcoming), Rotterdam (the Netherlands); CEBI lunch seminar (2022), Copenhagen (Denmark); iHEA Congress (2021), Virtual; Annual Conference of the International Association for Applied Econometrics (2021), Virtual; North American Summer Meeting of the Econometric Society (2021), Virtual.
This is my master's thesis, which is awarded the Jan Brouwer Scriptieprijs 2021 by the Royal Holland Society for Sciences and Humanities (Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen, KHMW). The KHMW posted their jury report on their webpage.
[4.] "Estimating left-truncated shared-frailty models with time-varying covariates", mimeo, with Gerard van den Berg. 2023.
Abstract: Shared frailty models with frailty terms that are independent of the observed covariates are the duration data equivalent of linear panel data models with random effects. We consider likelihood-based estimation of shared frailty models if observed durations are left-truncated, covariates can be time-varying, and a random effect is shared among an arbitrary amount of spells. Our estimation procedure accommodates dynamic selection on both observed and unobserved characteristics, which makes the observed left-truncated sample selective with respect to the underlying population. We deliver a general and novel STATA routine for our estimation procedure. We provide an example where the biases in duration dependence and covariate effects that arise if truncation is not properly taken care of are substantial at a low number of shared spells but eventually approach zero for a higher number of spells. At the same time, the frailty variance is increasingly overestimated.
Presented at: Groningen Metrics Meet (GMM) (2023)
[5.] "Financial Consequences of Widowhood", Netspar Design paper 160, with Rob Alessie and Raun van Ooijen. 2020.
Abstract: This paper studies the impact of widowhood on the income position of surviving spouses, before and after the normal retirement age. Moreover, we consider the importance of public survivor benefits and other sources of income that alleviate the financial consequences of widowhood. To further understand the degree of income protection provided by public survivor benefits, we analyze the impact of a substantial reform of the survivors' benefits scheme in 1996 that imposed stricter eligibility criteria and a means-tested benefit level for cohorts born after 1949. Using rich administrative data, we find that, three years after widowhood, women of working age experience an about twenty percent reduction in equivalized disposable household income. In contrast, retired widows can maintain their previous standard of living. The survivor's benefit reform resulted in a further reduction in the standard of living of working-age widows, particularly for women with a high pre-widowhood household income who work less after the reform. While men experienced a thirty percent increase in equivalized income before the reform, their standard of living remains fairly constant after the reform because their labor supply remains unchanged.
Presented at: EEA congress (2021).
Media coverage: Invited to write summary for the magazine Geron.
[6.] "Stability of Preferences for Dimensions of Well-Being Across Time and Regions", with Jochen Mierau and Raun van Ooijen. 2026.
Abstract: Well-being indicators are increasingly used alongside GDP to guide policy, yet policy evaluation requires welfare-consistent aggregation across multiple dimensions. Combining multidimensional indicators into a well-being index, therefore, requires estimates of the relative weights of these dimensions. We elicit these weights from stated preferences and assess their stability over time and across regions. Using repeated stated-preference data from a large panel in two neighboring Dutch regions collected three years apart (2021 and 2024), we estimate preference weights for a broad set of indicators aligned with the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi framework on the measurement of economic performance and social progress. We then use these weights to construct a preference-weighted well-being index and decompose changes in the index into components driven by objective outcomes versus changing preferences. We find that the overall structure of preferences is largely stable between 2021 and 2024. Health, social cohesion, and the living environment are consistently among the highest-weighted dimensions, while several other highly weighted dimensions (including employment, job availability, personal debt, neighborhood safety, and trust in others) shift over time, coinciding with developments during the post-pandemic recovery. Across regions, the overall weight vector is similar, but several dimensions differ significantly, particularly those related to local economic conditions, environmental externalities, and trust in institutions. Decomposition shows that preference shifts account for about a quarter of the total change in local well-being over time. Taken together, these findings underscore the importance of allowing well-being weights to vary across regions and time for policy evaluation.
Work in progress:
"The Financial Consequences of Divorce. Implications for Retirement Planning", with Max Groneck, Raun van Ooijen, Rob Alessie, and Ugne Sliciute.