2004
Obesity, Disability and Movement Onto the Disability Insurance Rolls
WP 2004-089 , UM04-08
Between the early 1980s and 2002, both the prevalence of obesity and the number of beneficiaries of the Social Security Disability Insurance program doubled. We test whether these trends are related; specifically, we test whether obesity causes disability and movement…
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The Social Security Retirement Earnings Test, Retirement and Benefit Claiming
WP 2004-090 , UM04-01
This paper introduces the age at which Social Security benefits are claimed as an additional outcome in a structural model of retirement and wealth. The model is then used to simulate the effects of abolishing the remainder of the Social…
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Using a Structural Retirement Model to Simulate the Effects of Changes to the OASDI and Medicare Programs
WP 2004-091 , UM04-06
In this paper, we specify a dynamic programming model that addresses the interplay among health, financial resources, and the labor market behavior of men in the later part of their working lives. The model is estimated using data from the…
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Correcting Second Home Equity in HRS/AHEAD: The Issues, a Method, and Some Preliminary Results
WP 2004-081
Second home equity is an important component of both housing equity and net worth for the old population. It has been covered, implicitly or explicitly, across all waves of HRS and AHEAD surveys. The negative impact of the inconsistent treatment…
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2003
The Supplemental Security Income Program and Incentives to Claim Social Security Retirement Early: Empirical Evidence from Matched SIPP and Social Security Administrative Files
WP 2003-036 , UM02-13
Features of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program and the social security retirement system interact to create incentives for prospective participants in the aged portion of SSI to withdraw from the labor force and make an early old age insurance…
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Widowhood, Divorce, and Loss of Health Insurance Among Near Elderly Women: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study
WP 2003-040 , UM00-09
We have found modest effects of widowhood events on loss of health insurance. There are also modest effects of widowhood on labor supply, which we have not as yet attempted to attribute to insurance demand. Even new widowhood events, however,…
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Disability Benefits as Social Insurance: Tradeoffs Between Screening Stringency and Benefit Generosity in Optimal Program Design
WP 2003-042 , UM00-13
The Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) system is designed to provide income security to workers in the event that health problems prevent them from working. In order to qualify for benefits, applicants must pass a medical screening that is intended…
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Who Becomes a Stockholder? Expectations, Subjective Uncertainty, and Asset Allocation
WP 2003-039 , UM02-04
We develop a model of portfolio selection with subjective uncertainty and learning in order to explain why some people hold stocks while others don’t. We model heterogeneity in information directly, which is an alternative to the existing explanations that emphasized…
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Key Equations in the Tuljapurkar-Lee Model of the Social Security System
WP 2003-044 , UM03-Q1
We present stochastic forecasts of the Social Security trust fund by modeling key demographic and economic variables as historical time series, and using the fitted models to generate computer simulations of future fund performance. We evaluate several plans for achieving…
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Stochastic Forecasts of the Social Security Trust Fund
WP 2003-043 , UM03-Q1
We present stochastic forecasts of the Social Security trust fund by modeling key demographic and economic variables as historical time series, and using the fitted models to generate computer simulations of future fund performance. We evaluate several plans for achieving…
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