Project Year: 2011

The HRS is a key data source used to analyze the health and economic status of the middle-aged and older population in the United States and many analyses are specifically interested in the low-income population that is eligible for various means-tested programs....

This project will study biases that differential mortality introduces into cross-sectional or synthetic panel age profiles of consumption, as would be estimated from the Consumer Expenditure Survey. The data for this study will come from the Health and Retirement...

The fraction of American adults receiving benefits from the Social Security Disability Insurance program (SSDI) has risen dramatically during the past several decades. A proposed solution to rising caseload costs consists of changing program rules to encourage fully...

This project will investigate two questions. (1.) Do mortgage foreclosure, and inability (or unwillingness) to continue mortgage payments, depend, in a significant fraction of cases, on recessionary unemployment? If so, can they be viewed as arising from short-run...

Immigration is having an increasingly important effect on the U.S. social insurance system. On the one hand, documented immigrants have the right to pension benefits, health insurance, etc. On the other hand, undocumented immigrants contribute taxes, but are not...

HRS data from 2010 will be used to determine the effects of the 2007-2009 recession on the wealth and retirement of the early boomer population. Previously, we used 2006 data to examine their potential vulnerability to the stock market decline. Specifically, we...

Our previous MRRC project demonstrated a clear association between the Big Five personality factor of conscientiousness and several important measures of lifetime economic success, including lifetime earnings and retirement wealth conditional on earnings. We now...

According to survey results from the American Life Panel (ALP), about 75% of households reduced spending because of the financial crisis. While an important indicator of behavior, this figure does not tell us the magnitude of the reduction. In this project, we will...

The global financial crisis has deeply affected household saving, work, and income patterns. The crisis dealt a heavy blow to investment-based private pensions. The financial implosion, in turn, produced an economic crisis with high unemployment and low earnings....

Our proposed work has two primary goals. Our first goal is to model the effect that income has on health, health has on income, and the latent productivity in health capital production. Our second contribution will be to use the new model to explore the effects of...

Individual decisions about consumption, saving, and labor supply should be directly linked to subjective expectations about future events. While a rich literature has emerged that examines individuals’ subjective probability expectations, little work has documented...

Many displaced workers suffer near-permanent losses in earning capacity. Recent estimates suggest that job losers from mass-layoff events during the 1982-83 recession, for example, experienced long-term earnings losses of 15% or more. For workers who are age-eligible,...

Population aging challenges the solvency of Social Security, which has led to reform proposals intended to increase the labor supply of seniors. The imperative to delay retirements of older workers, however, may be frustrated by continuing age discrimination;...

A well-known body of research explores how the award of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits affects the labor supply and earnings of recipients. Our proposed project will explore a complementary — and we believe equally consequential — set...

Over the past several decades a variety of policies have been implemented at state and federal levels aimed at encouraging employment among the disabled, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, by mandating reasonable accommodation by employers for...

We will use data from the Ticket Research File matched to the Master Earnings File and the Rehabilitation Services Administration 911 file to conduct exploratory analysis on SSDI entry for state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agency clients who were disability...

Early exits from the labor force can adversely affect economic well-being in retirement. Health status and disability are important determinants of retirement age. However, it is unknown whether more intensive health care utilization can effectively delay or reverse...

A major means to improve the scientific basis for actual and prospective policy evaluation on Social Security is through systematic research on systems in other countries. Possibly the most interesting country to study is Chile, which has provided a laboratory for...

Despite a progressive payout formula designed to redistribute OASI benefits in favor of low earners, studies using data from the early 1990s found the Social Security old age and survivors program fostered less redistribution than expected. High income families were...