2007
Financial Literacy and Stock Market Participation
WP 2007-162
Individuals are increasingly put in charge of their financial security after retirement. Moreover, the supply of complex financial products has increased considerably over the years. However, we still have little or no information about whether individuals have the financial knowledge…
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Future Beneficiary Expectations of the Returns to Delayed Social Security Benefit Claiming and Choice Behavior
WP 2007-164 , UM07-01
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…
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Estimating the Health Effects of Retirement
WP 2007-168 , UM07-08
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…
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The Effects of Health Insurance and Self-Insurance on Retirement Behavior
WP 2007-170 , UM07-13
This paper provides an empirical analysis of the effect of employer-provided health insurance and Medicare in determining retirement behavior. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we estimate the first dynamic programming model of retirement that accounts for both…
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Burnout and the Retirement Decision
WP 2007-166 , UM07-03
We introduce the process of psychological burnout and recovery as an explanation for the phenomenon known as unretirement. We illustrate theoretically how predictable time variation in burnout could generate retirement and subsequent re-entry in a standard retirement model. We apply…
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Managing the Risk of Life
WP 2007-167 , UM07-04
This study analyzes the role of individual’s and spouse’s survival expectations and knowledge about Social Security rules on the expected Social Security claiming age, taking into account the various incentives single and married individuals face. There is substantial heterogeneity in…
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Housing Wealth and Retirement Timing
WP 2007-172 , UM07-20
We use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the Office of Housing Enterprise Oversight to measure the effect of changes in housing wealth on retirement timing. Using cross-MSA variation in house-price movements to identify wealth effects on…
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How do Immigrants Fare in Retirement?
WP 2007-169 , UM07-09
Existing literature suggests that immigrants receive lower wages than U.S.-born workers with similar characteristics. This could imply that immigrant households would enter retirement at a significant financial disadvantage. In this paper, we examine the retirement resources available to immigrant families…
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Trends in the Labor Force Participation of Married Women
WP 2007-171 , UM07-15
This study seeks to quantify determinants, and costs, of the labor—force participation of married women. We use demographic and earnings data from the Health and Retirement Study. The earnings data constitute an unusually long panel but have the defect of…
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Take-Up of Medicare Part D and the SSA Subsidy: Early Results from the Health and Retirement Study
WP 2007-163 , UM07-06
We analyze newly available data from the Health and Retirement Study on senior citizens’ take-up of Medicare Part D and the associated SSA Low-Income Subsidy. We find that economic factors – specifically, demand for prescription drugs - drove the decision…
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