2005
Will China Eat Our Lunch or Take Us to Dinner? Simulating the Transition Paths of the U.S., E.U., Japan, and China
WP 2005-102 , UM05-03
This paper develops a dynamic, life-cycle, general equilibrium model to study the interdependent demographic, fiscal, and economic transition paths of China, Japan, the U.S., and the EU. Each of these countries/regions is entering a period of rapid and significant aging…
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Why Not Retire? The Time and Timing Costs of Market Work
WP 2005-104 , UM05-18
Retirement ages among older Americans have only recently begun to increase after their precipitous fifty-year decline. Early retirement may result from incentives provided by retirement systems; but it may also result from the rigidities imposed by market work schedules. Using…
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Estimating Life Cycle Effects of Subjective Survival Probabilites in the Health and Retirement Study
WP 2005-103 , UM05-S1
This paper attempts to confirm the life-cycle relationship that lower subjective survival probabilities should lead to less positively sloped consumption trajectories. I use the results of six waves of subjective survival probability questions in the HRS to construct an index…
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Retirement, Saving, Benefit Claiming and Solvency Under A Partial System of Voluntary Personal Accounts
WP 2005-105 , UM05-02
This paper is based on a structural model of retirement and saving, estimated with data for a sample of married men in the Health and Retirement Study. The model simulates how various features of a system of personal Social Security…
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Does Social Security Privatization Produce Efficiency Gains?
WP 2005-106 , UM05-15
While privatizing Social Security can improve labor supply incentives, it can also reduce risk sharing when households face uninsurable risks. We simulate a stylized 50-percent privatization using an overlapping-generations model where heterogeneous agents with elastic labor supply face idiosyncratic earnings…
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Technological Progress and Worker Productivity at Different Ages
WP 2005-107 , UM05-04
Economists have long thought of technological progress as a primary determinant of rising living standards over time. One might think of technological progress as increasing the "effectiveness" of labor, thereby raising the amount of output that each unit of labor…
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Financial Literacy and Planning: Implications for Retirement Wellbeing
WP 2005-108 , UM05-09
Only a minority of American households feels “confident” about retirement saving adequacy, and little is known about why people fail to plan for retirement, and whether planning and information costs might affect retirement saving patterns. To better understand these issues,…
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Gender, Marriage, and Asset Accumulation in the United States
WP 2005-109 , UM05-12
Wealth accumulation has important implications for the relative well-being of households. In this paper, we describe how household wealth in the United States varies by gender and family type. We find evidence of large differences in observed wealth between single-female-headed…
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2004
Personal Accounts and Family Retirement
WP 2004-067 , UM02-06
This paper constructs a model of retirement and saving by two earner couples. The model includes three dimensions of behavior: the joint determination of retirement and saving; heterogeneity in time preference; and the interdependence of retirement decisions of husbands and…
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Payout Choices by Retirees in Chile: What Are They and Why?
WP 2004-068 , UM03-07
In 1981 Chile adopted its new multi-pillar system, which featured privately managed individual accounts. Starting in 1983 payouts from the accounts were permitted and detailed rules about payouts were put in place. The Chilean scheme therefore gives us an opportunity…
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