2020
The Changing Nature of Work
WP 2020-415 , UM20-03
We provide new evidence on the changing nature of work and its influence on individuals’ capacity to work by linking historical measures of occupational job demands with harmonized data on individual abilities from a unique survey conducted in the RAND…
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Social Security Wealth, Inequality, and Life-cycle Saving: An Update
WP 2020-416 , UM20-16
Social Security wealth (SSW) is the present value of future benefits an individual will receive less the present value of future taxes they will pay. When an individual enters the labor force, they generally face a lifetime of taxes to…
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2019
Understanding Job Transitions and Retirement Expectations Using Stated Preferences for Job Characteristics
WP 2019-396 , UM17-08
As the population ages in the United States and other countries, encouraging older individuals to work would help counter increasing dependency ratios and improve national economic outcomes. Extending working lives is likely not simply a function of improving monetary incentives.…
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The Growth and Geographical Variation of Nursing Home Self-Pay Prices
WP 2019-397 , UM17-14
Nursing home care is arguably the largest financial risk for the elderly without private or social insurance coverage. The annual out-of-pocket expenditure can easily exceed $70,000. Despite the substantial financial burdens on the elderly, the understanding of nursing home self-pay…
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How Would 401(k) ‘Rothification’ Alter Saving, Retirement Security, and Inequality?
WP 2019-398 , UM19-12
The U.S. has long incentivized retirement saving in 401(k) and similar retirement accounts by permitting workers to defer taxes on contributions, levying them instead when retirees withdraw funds in retirement. This paper develops a dynamic life-cycle model to show how…
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How Reliant are Older Americans on State and Local Government Pensions?
WP 2019-399 , UM19-07
State and local government pension plans cover about 19.5 million participants, and many participants are heavily reliant on these pensions for retirement income. Most of these plans, however, are underfunded. Based on data from the Health and Retirement Study, we…
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Latent Work Capacity and Retirement Expectations
WP 2019-400 , UM19-02
Understanding how health decline influences retirement decisions is fundamental for the design of targeted policies that encourage working longer. While there is wide agreement on the relevance of age-related health decline for determining labor supply and retirement decisions, the process…
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Trends in Health and Mortality Inequalities in the United States
WP 2019-401 , UM19-04
Recent literature has documented a widening gap in mortality in the United States between individuals with high socioeconomic status (SES) and low SES. An important question is whether this trend will continue. In this paper we document trends and inequalities…
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Interest Rate Trends in a Global Context
WP 2019-402 , UM19-05
Long-term interest rates have been falling globally since the early 1980s and have reached historically low levels. Past forecasts largely missed this secular decline. This paper reviews methodologies for making long-term interest rate projections. We synthesize results from studies that…
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Estimating the Effects of the Totalization Agreements
WP 2019-403 , UM19-Q2
This paper quantifies the effects of the totalization agreements that coordinate the United States Social Security program with the comparable programs of other countries. For each treated country that has signed an agreement with the U.S., we construct a synthetic…
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