2010 | MRDRC

Project

2010

The Joint Decision Making of Married Couples and the Social Security Pension System

The current OASI program redistributes resources from high-wage workers to low-wage workers, and from two-earner couples to one-earner couples. However, previous dynamic general equilibrium analyses of Social Security mostly assume ‘unisex’ individuals, to...

Authors: Shinichi Nishiyama,

Project

2010

Earnings Growth as a Predictor of Mortality with an Application to Immigrant Mortality

This project measures how earnings growth (measured by changes in earnings over various periods in the life cycle) affects mortality. Previous research has found inconsistent results regarding the effects of levels of education and income on mortality. We hypothesize...

Authors: Harriet Duleep, David Jaeger,

Project

2010

Geographic dispersion and the well-being of the elderly

The rising cost of medical care, especially long-term care, poses serious budgetary challenges in the context of an aging population. The majority of long-term care is currently provided by adult children, likely affecting their labor supply. Absent this support, the...

Authors: Kathleen McGarry, Judith Seltzer,

Project

2010

Bequest Motives and Asset Decumulation at the End of Life

The proposed research would examine how out-of-pocket medical expenses and bequest motives affect the saving of elderly singles. It will use data from the Assets and Health Dynamics of the Oldest Old (AHEAD) dataset to estimate a dynamic programming model of saving...

Authors: Eric French, John Bailey Jones, Mariacristina De Nardi,

Project

2010

Post-Retirement Adjustments in Defined Benefit Pensions

Few private defined benefit pension plans index benefits after a worker begins receiving them. Previous (now dated) research finds that most plans do, nonetheless, make “voluntary” adjustments, which compensate for roughly 40% of the price increases after retirement....

Authors: Charles Brown,

Project

2010

The Effect of Out-of-Pocket Spending for Health Care on Economic Preparation for Retirement

In research previously funded by the Social Security Administration through MRRC, we estimated the fraction of households aged 65-69 who were adequately prepared for retirement by finding whether their economic resources could sustain an empirically estimated...

Authors: Michael Hurd, Susann Rohwedder,

Project

2010

New Explorations of Health and Wealth

We explore the role of health shocks on wealth and retirement income. Several recent contributions to the literature emphasize that precautionary saving in response to health uncertainty plays a critical role in understanding age-asset profiles of households. These...

Authors: John Karl Scholz, Ananth Seshadri,

Project

2010

Cognitive Skills, Numeracy and Retiree Health Care Expenditure

The well-being of retirees with lower cognitive ability and numeracy is at greater risk because they have lower incomes yet higher medical expenditures. Linking HRS data to administrative records, we will evaluate two hypotheses about why this group spends more on...

Authors: Daniel Silverman, Lauren Nicholas, Hanming Fang,

Project

2010

Explaining the Growth in Social Security Benefits among the Retirement Age Population

Social Security wealth represents almost one-third of the total wealth of the Health and Retirement Study’s (early boomer) cohort aged 51 to 56 in 2004. It grew by over 50 percent in real terms over the period 1992 to 2004. This project will explore HRS cohort data to...

Authors: Thomas L. Steinmeier, Alan Gustman, Nahid Tabatabai,

Project

2010

Financial Capability in the United States: Consumer Decision-Making and the Role of Social Security

This project will analyze new data from the 2009 U.S. Treasury/FINRA Financial Capability Survey. This survey provides new and unique information to assess how American households make financial decisions, how they fare in current economic conditions, and in what ways...

Authors: Annamaria Lusardi,

Project

2010

The Effects of the Economic Crisis on Retirement and Spending

The United States is experiencing the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Housing prices have declined, leaving many with negative equity; falling stock values have substantially reduced household net worth; high and increasing rates of job loss...

Authors: Michael Hurd, Susann Rohwedder,

Project

2010

The Financial Crisis and the Well-Being of Social Security Recipients

Both housing prices and stock market values have declined substantially since their peaks in 2006 and 2007. Retirees with substantial investments in stock or housing have therefore experienced significant declines in wealth and, potentially, in well-being. This...

Authors: Matthew Shapiro,

Project

2010

Cognitive Function and Financial Knowledge: A Human Capital Approach

This project builds on previous work (Delavande, Rohwedder and Willis, 2008) that develops a formal model of financial knowledge accumulation and establishes evidence on the role of cognition in financial knowledge, using rich data from the Cognitive Economics...

Authors: Robert J. Willis, Brooke Helppie McFall,

Project

2010

Mortgage Distress of the Elderly: How Strong are Family Ties?

The recent financial crisis finds many households, in particular, older households, in a precarious situation. Debt, including mortgage debt, is now much more common for the elderly. This proposal would use Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data to examine the...

Authors: Frank Stafford, Elena Gouskova,

Project

2010

Borrowing from Yourself: The Determinants of 401(k) Loan Patterns

This project proposes to evaluate the economic rationale for 401(k) plan loans and the empirical determinants of loan patterns. We will show how plan design and participant characteristics contribute to borrowing from one’s pension, as well as default and repayment...

Authors: Olivia S. Mitchell, Timothy Jun Lu,

Project

2010

Financial Literacy, Short-run Impatience, and the Determinants of Savings and Financial Management

Two competing explanations for why consumers have trouble with financial decisions are gaining momentum. The first is that people are financially illiterate, lacking the skills needed to calculate expected returns or present discounted values which may cause them to...

Authors: Olivia S. Mitchell, Justine Hastings,

Project

2010

Financial Knowledge And Financial Literacy At The Household Level

Financial preparation for retirement is a household decision. Measures of imperfect knowledge about pensions and Social Security can be constructed with data from the Health and Retirement Study, including frequencies of don’t know responses, resort to brackets...

Authors: Thomas L. Steinmeier, Alan Gustman, Nahid Tabatabai,

Project

2010

Personality, Lifetime Earnings, and Retirement Wealth

Lifetime earnings vary widely, even controlling for education. Households vary widely in their retirement wealth, even when controlling for lifetime income (Venti and Wise, 1998). The role of conscientiousness and other personality traits as independent factors in...

Authors: David Weir, Angela Lee Duckworth,

Project

2010

New HRS Data on Intergenerational Transfers

Although it has found wide use in analysis of Social Security and other policies, the life-cycle model of household behavior overlooks connections within family lines that may considerably affect the well-being of both young and old households. This proposal would use...

Authors: John Laitner, Amanda Sonnega,

Project

2010

The Labor Supply Effects of Disability Insurance Work Disincentives: Evidence from Administrative Data

The Social Security DI program has long been thought to impose strong work disincentives. Nevertheless, its causal effect on labor supply has been difficult to estimate. Using a quasi-experimental research design that exploits the fact that DI benefits are payable...

Authors: Nicole Maestas, Jae Song,

Project Year: 2010

The Joint Decision Making of Married Couples and the Social Security Pension System

Earnings Growth as a Predictor of Mortality with an Application to Immigrant Mortality

Geographic dispersion and the well-being of the elderly

Bequest Motives and Asset Decumulation at the End of Life

Post-Retirement Adjustments in Defined Benefit Pensions

The Effect of Out-of-Pocket Spending for Health Care on Economic Preparation for Retirement

New Explorations of Health and Wealth

Cognitive Skills, Numeracy and Retiree Health Care Expenditure

Explaining the Growth in Social Security Benefits among the Retirement Age Population

Financial Capability in the United States: Consumer Decision-Making and the Role of Social Security

The Effects of the Economic Crisis on Retirement and Spending

The Financial Crisis and the Well-Being of Social Security Recipients

Cognitive Function and Financial Knowledge: A Human Capital Approach

Mortgage Distress of the Elderly: How Strong are Family Ties?

Borrowing from Yourself: The Determinants of 401(k) Loan Patterns

Financial Literacy, Short-run Impatience, and the Determinants of Savings and Financial Management

Financial Knowledge And Financial Literacy At The Household Level

Personality, Lifetime Earnings, and Retirement Wealth

New HRS Data on Intergenerational Transfers

The Labor Supply Effects of Disability Insurance Work Disincentives: Evidence from Administrative Data

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