Project Category: retirement savings

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, saving regret — defined as the wish to have saved more and spent less earlier in life — was reported by 58% of the older U.S. population. And, the reports were strongly related to the experience of shocks, such as unemployment or health...

The Social Security Amendments of 1983 raised the Full Retirement Age (FRA), the age at which claimants receive an unreduced monthly benefit, from 65 to 67. However, this change was set to be gradually implemented, with the first increase from 65 to 66 phased-in...

This project builds on our previous work by using newly collected data to examine how Americans’ economic and retirement security have changed during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis will examine (1) how the long duration of the pandemic and...

Retirement saving is heavily subsidized in the U.S. Employers and the federal government devote a combined $300 billion annually to encourage contributions to defined contribution (DC) schemes. This institutional design rewards those who can, and do, save more for...

To understand racial disparities in retirement age and financial preparedness, we construct a model of labor supply, retirement, and savings over the life cycle where all parameters, including preferences for time and risk and the stochastic processes of marriage,...

This project builds on our current work examining how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has affected Americans’ financial well-being by using existing and soon to be collected data from the Understanding America Study (UAS). Our analysis will shed light on (1) how the...

This project will estimate the degree of disability risk among the older than 50 population in the United States and England, and evaluate joint reforms of disability insurance and retirement pension programs in a dynamic model of labor supply, social security...

We propose to use new data from the 2019 wave of the Consumption and Activities Mail Survey to help interpret the observed decline in spending as individuals age. At one extreme, forward-looking individuals optimally chose the decline; at the other, myopic individuals...

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS), this project will estimate a dynamic model of medical spending and how medical spending shocks affect the wealth and insurance purchases of older Americans. Our...

Some studies have raised concerns that many households reach retirement with limited financial resources. The behavioral economics literature posits that procrastination may be an important explanation. We fielded a survey in the RAND American Life Panel, asking...

Household wealth inequality in the U.S. has been rising, but those measures do not include Social Security. For individual Social Security participants, Social Security Wealth (SSW) is equal to the present value of future benefits less the present value of future...

Insuring retirement security is an important challenge for our aging society. Accordingly, policymakers are interested in a range of policies to help individuals save more for retirement on their own. One reform currently being tested is for specific states to provide...

Americans reach retirement with varying degrees of preparation, with many facing shortfalls in savings. We propose to use unique survey data collected among respondents to the Understanding America Study to measure the relative roles of subjective beliefs about...

State and local government pension plans cover about 19.5 million participants, and many participants are heavily reliant on these pensions for retirement income. Yet, most plans are underfunded. This proposed research will quantify how many Americans are entitled to...

This project will link survey and administrative data to investigate how within-couple differences in preferences and decision-making abilities affect household finances. We study whether misalignment of preferences or abilities influences choices and, thus,...

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS), we estimate the stochastic process for total medical spending and its components.  By focusing on dynamics, we consider not only the risk of catastrophic expenses...

The US incentivizes retirement saving in 401(k) and similar retirement accounts by permitting workers to defer taxes on contributions; taxes are then levied only when retirees withdraw their funds. Yet the Treasury foregoes over $100B/year due to tax-deferred...