TY - JOUR T1 - Health Shocks, Out-of-Pocket Medical Expenses and Consumer Debt Among Middle-Aged and Older Americans JF - The Journal of Consumer Affairs Y1 - 2012 A1 - Hyungsoo Kim A1 - Yoon, Wonah A1 - Karen A. Zurlo KW - Consumption and Savings KW - Demographics KW - Healthcare KW - Net Worth and Assets AB - We examine two important issues related to health and financial burden in middle-aged and older Americans: (1) whether or not new health events affect a consumer's unsecured debt, and (2) to what extent the associated out-of-pocket medical expenses (OOP) contribute to unsecured debt. We use six biennial waves (1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008) from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We estimated fixed effects models and conducted mediation analyses. We find that new health events affect the accumulation of unsecured debt. Our estimates suggest that new health events increase unsecured debt by 6.3 ( 230) to 9.3 ( 339); approximately 20 of the increase in unsecured consumer debt comes from OOP when experiencing new health events. New severe health events increase debt for the 50-64 age group, but do not increase it for the 65 group. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT PB - 46 VL - 46 IS - 3 U4 - Health care expenditures/Consumer credit/Middle age/Older people/Personal finance/Investment analysis and personal finance/Experiment/theoretical treatment/Out of pocket costs ER -