2007
Why Are Companies Freezing Their Pensions?
The shift in pension coverage from defined benefit plans to 401(k)s has been underway since 1981. This shift was the result of three developments: 1) the addition of 401(k) provisions to existing thrift and profit sharing plans; 2) a surge…
The Role of Governance in Retirement Investments: Evidence from Variable Annuities
We study the relative importance of market governance and non-market governance in retirement investments using a sample of variable annuities. Variable annuity investors are significantly less sensitive to performance and fees than mutual fund investors. Consistent with a complementary role…
Consumption and Income Poverty for Those 65 and Over
This paper examines income and consumption based measures of poverty for those 65 and over between 1972 and 2004. This study contributes to the existing literature on poverty in several ways. First, we construct consumption based measures of poverty that…
Future Beneficiary Expectations of the Returns to Delayed Social Security Benefit Claiming and Choice Behavior
We report on our preliminary findings from an innovative module of survey questions in the RAND American Life Panel designed to measure willingness to delay take-up of Social Security benefits. Among respondents who expect to stop working full time prior…
The Impact of Late-Career Health and Employment Shocks on Social Security and Pension Wealth
Download: 2007 RRC
How Fast Should the Social Security Eligibility Age Rise?
Many Social Security reform proposals recommend increasing the age at which people become eligible for Social Security retirement benefits as a way to reduce future expenditures, maintain benefit adequacy in light of other benefit cuts, and increase labor supply. But…
Estimating the Health Effects of Retirement
We estimate the magnitude of any direct effect of retirement on health. Since retirement is endogenous to heath, it is not possible to estimate this effect by comparing the health of individuals before and after they retire. As an alternative…