Research by Author & Topic

Publications by Timothy Waidmann on Elderly

This article attempts to resolve previously published inconsistencies across national surveys in trends in activity limitations among the elderly. The authors prepared estimates from five national surveys from 1982-2001, and investigated sources of the inconsistencies. The panel found consistent declines of 1%-2.5% per year for two commonly used disability measures: difficulty with, and help with daily activities. Mixed evidence was found for the use of help or equipment. The panel found that the period, definition of disability, treatment of the institutionalized population, and age standardizing of results affected results. The implications of the findings for policy, national survey efforts, and further research are discussed. (Freedman, VA, E Crimmins, RF Schoeni, B Spillman, H Aykan, K Land, J Lubitz, K Manton, L Martin, D Shinberg, T Waidmann. 2004. "Resolving Discrepancies in Old-Age Disability Trends Across National Surveys: Report From a Technical Working Group." Demography 41(3):417-441.)

This report details the development of a third version of MINT (Modeling Income in the Near Term), a tool for simulating the retirement incomes of members of the Baby Boom and neighboring cohorts. MINT3 can produce projections of economic and demographic characteristics in the year 2020, at the time of retirement, and for other years and ages. It can be used both to construct a baseline using alternative economic and demographic assumptions and to analyze the distributional consequences of a variety of Social Security policy changes.

This paper highlights the important differences between the House and Senate Medicare bills. The differences discussed include fee-for-service changes; private plan changes; changes in beneficiary contributions, increases in the Part B premium, expansion of Specified Low Income Medicare Beneficiary protections, creation of an income-related premium, addition of a home health copayment, and increased age of eligibility. The study concludes with a brief review of other proposed changes that would also affect beneficiaries.