TY - RPRT T1 - Evaluation of Subjective Probability Distributions in the HRS Y1 - 1993 A1 - Michael D Hurd A1 - Kathleen McGarry KW - Consumption and Savings KW - Health Conditions and Status KW - Methodology AB - In the Health and Retirement Survey respondents were asked about the chances they would live to 75 or to 85, and the chances they would work after age 62 or 65. We analyze the responses to determine if they behave like probabilities, if their averages are close to average probabilities in the population, and if they have correlations with other variables that are similar to correlations with actual outcomes. We find that generally they do behave like probabilities and they do aggregate. Most remarkable, however, is that they covary with other variables in the same way actual outcomes vary with the variables. For example, smokers give lower probabilities of living to 75 than nonsmokers. We conclude that these measures of subjective probabilities have great potential use in models of intertemporal decision making under uncertainty. PB - National Bureau of Economic Research UR - https://www.nber.org/papers/w4560 N1 - ProCite field 8 : SUNY-Stony Brook and NBER; UCLA and NBER U4 - Microeconomic Data Management/Economics of the Elderly/Health Production--Nutrition, Mortality, Morbidity, Disability, and Economic Behavior ER -