2017

The Executive Office of the President, Council of Economic Advisers, has recently stated that “too few studies on the mechanisms through which workers’ job satisfaction and firm profits are affected hinder a deeper understanding of the benefits and costs of…

Social science, more than ever, is drawing upon the insights of personality psychology. Though researchers know that character skills and personality traits, such as conscientiousness, grit, self-control, or a growth mindset could be important for life outcomes, they struggle to…

Understanding the prevalence and predictive power of behavioral factors—deviations from classical economic preferences, beliefs, and decision rules—in savings and retirement decisions is critical to understanding what products and policies will best foster long-term financial well-being. The authors propose low-cost techniques…

Skilled nursing home care is arguably the largest financial risk for the elderly without private or social insurance coverage. The self-pay prices escalate more than 50 percent during the past decade. Despite such drastic growth and substantial financial burdens on…

In both the U.S. and the U.K., inequality has been rising among households in successive cohorts, and younger households seem to be accumulating less wealth for retirement than their parents did. This project aims to investigate the role that intergenerational…

The consequences of poor financial capability are serious and include making mistakes with credit, drawing down retirement assets too quickly, and being defrauded by financial predators. Because older persons are close to or past the peak of their wealth accumulation,…

This project will study how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) affects the labor supply of near-elderly, post-displacement workers in the Displaced Workers Survey. Before the ACA, displaced workers who needed health insurance had strong incentives to find jobs (with health…

The risk of labor-market, health, and asset-value shocks comprise profound challenges for older workers. However, shocks to their children may be a source of additional risk, and hence, an additional challenge for retirement security. In this study, we propose using…

Recent, highly publicized papers document that for U.S. Whites with low incomes or low educational attainment, adult mortality rates have stagnated for men and increased for women, while the general population continues to enjoy gains in life expectancy. Some have…

This project will present a review of the main means-tested programs in the U.S.: how they operate, common features, and the rules governing eligibility. The emphasis will be on a comparative analysis across programs. The U.S. programs covered will include,…