In Chapter 1, I examine the causal impact of health shocks on the time spent in home production among retirees using data from the Health and Retirement Study. On the one hand, an increase in home production can shield consumption from declining net income due to an increase in medical costs (income effect). On the other hand, home production requires effort, which may become increasingly difficult after a health shock (impairing effect). To comprehend these two effects, I evaluate two groups of health shocks: those resulting in high medical costs and those resulting in limitations in activities of daily living. I find robust evidence for the impairing effect, i.e., home production decreases, and the decline can be as high as 16% relative to the average home production time. Additionally, I observe that the decrease in home production is not entirely mitigated by an increase in received assistance or consumption spending. My findings suggest that when considering home production, health shocks have more detrimental effects than implied solely by monetary costs. Consequently, further attention should be given to policies that offer non-pecuniary support to individuals facing health issues, such as home-and-community-based services.In Chapter 2, I investigate the gender wealth gap among married and cohabiting couples in Germany, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). It explores the gender wealth gap by investigating various components of wealth and ownership disparities among couples. On average, men possess 34% more wealth than women. This gap arises both from differences in extensive margin asset ownership and differences in wealth conditional on asset ownership. The gap in asset ownership, particularly in housing and business assets, contributes significantly to the overall gender wealth gap. Employing the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique, I find that observable characteristics can account for only 65% of the observed gender wealth gap. When analyzing couples where both own a given type of asset, controlling for observable characteristics eliminates the wealth gap. However, for couples with ownership differences, observable characteristics explain only a modest portion of the wealth gap and ownership gap. My findings underscore the importance of considering gender gaps in asset ownership in understanding the gender wealth gap and highlight the limited explanatory power of observable characteristics in accounting for the gap.