UM09-11: Social Security Literacy and Retirement Well-Being
Researchers
Abstract
We build upon the growing literature on financial literacy, which studies the prevalence of lack of knowledge about various financial issues, and propose to analyze how much people know about the Social Security rules using both a small pilot survey we have already conducted, and a follow-up and extended survey, hopefully funded by this proposal. We then propose to assess the consequences of the apparent prevalence of lack of information by individuals about the rules governing the Social Security system using a realistic and empirically-based life-cycle model of retirement behavior under uncertainty. We will investigate the individual’s retirement and savings decisions under incomplete information and unawareness, in which a portion of the population does not know some or all of the rules of the system. We will compare the outcomes in these cases to the outcome under full information, computing the average welfare gain resulting from the acquisition of information regarding the Social Security system. Our analysis can illuminate the need for policies that foster knowledge of the system, which can improve welfare among Americans of all ages.
Publications
- Social Security Literacy and Retirement Well-Being (Research Brief)
- Social Security Literacy and Retirement Well-Being (Working Paper)
- Social Security Literacy and Retirement Well-Being (Conference Paper)