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Abstract The rising healthcare costs due to population aging present a complex issue, with debate centering on whether these costs are driven by aging or end-of-life care. This study examines healthcare expenditures in Chinese households using data from the 2005 and 2018 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey. By applying the Heckman select model and a two-part model, the research innovatively includes time to death, income, social security and health level in the benchmark regression in order to validate the recent some new Red Herring hypothesis. The findings show that time to death is the primary determinant of healthcare expenditures, while the effect of aging is minimal. Income, social security, and health status also significantly influence health expenditure, but they do not function as Red Herring variables.

This article examines the extent to which differences in life-expectancy are associated with shifts in average hospital costs for different age groups. The effect of increases in life expectancy on the cost curves is identified by comparing two countries with different life expectancies, but which are very similar on other variables like culture, technology and health systems (Norway and Denmark). Using data from the National Patient Registries the paper compares the ratio of average spending on individuals who die and individuals who survive in different age groups in these two countries. The best fit between the age related cost curves is achieved when the cost curve in the country with a two year longer life expectancy is also shifted by two years.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate on population aging and growth in health expenditures, by providing precise estimates on how mortality related expenditures are influenced by age. Using a complete register of inpatient hospital admissions to create gender-cohort specific panels for each of the 430 Norwegian municipalities, we are able to identify mortality related hospital expenditures by separating the impact of mortality on current hospital expenditures from the impact of patients’ age and gender. We apply model estimates to quantify the mortality-related hospital expenditures for twenty age groups. The results suggest that mortality-related hospital expenditures are a decreasing function of age. Furthermore, the results clearly suggest that, both age and mortalities should be included when predicting future health care expenditures. The estimation results suggest that 9.2 % of all hospital expenditures is associated with treating individuals in their last year of life. Our results also suggest that the reduction in mortality rates in the period from 1998 to 2009 have, cet. par. contributed to an estimated reduction in total hospital expenditures of 0.6 billion NOK, a difference corresponding to 2 % of the expenditures in 2009. (The appendix can be found under "Supplementary Files" in the menu to the right)