Resumen

In this paper we study how current health investments respond to changes in expected future wealth. We exploit a large public pension reform introduced by the Chilean government in 1981, converting its Defined Benefit (DB) system into a Defined Contribution (DC) one. We compute 2SLS and Fuzzy Regression Kink Design estimates using detailed administrative data on a sample of the DC pension system's beneficiaries, called the "Historia Previsional de Afiliados". Crucially for our purposes, this dataset is linked to a longitudinal survey, the "Encuesta de Protección Social", that includes rich information on health outcomes. We find different results according to the gender of the individual. Females do not react to changes in their expected pension wealth, while males increase the use of medical services, which in turn, raises the probability of being diagnosed with a preventable chronic disease, such as diabetes and arthritis. Hence, we find evidence that men's health investments are forward looking in response to changes in their future pension savings, while women's are not.

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