The “red herring” after 20 years: ageing and health care expenditures

20 years ago, Zweifel, Felder and Meier (1999) established the by now famous red-herring hypothesis, according to which population ageing does not lead to an increase in per capita health care expenditures (HCE) because the observed positive correlation between age and health care expenditures (HCE) in cross-sectional data is exclusively due to the facts that mortality rises with age and a large share of HCE is caused by proximity to death. This...