2006 – Publication Years

Home Production by Dual Earner Couples and Consumption During Retirement

June 14, 2018
Family dynamics, Health and Retirement Study, Life-cycle model, Retirement

To study the role of home production in life—cycle behavior, this paper creates a theoretical model in which both spouses in a couple allocate their time between market and home work. It then derives a pair of regression equations for…

Consumption, Retirement, and Social Security: Evaluating the Efficiency of Reform with a Life-Cycle Model

June 14, 2018
Life-cycle model, Retirement, Social Security, Social Security reform

This paper analyzes the effect of a potential reform to the Social Security system on individuals’ retirement and consumption choices. We first estimate the coefficients for a life—cycle model. We assume intratemporally nonseparable preference orderings and endogenous retirement. Our framework…

Planning and Financial Literacy: How Do Women Fare?

June 14, 2018
Financial well-being, Health and Retirement Study, Retirement

Many older US households have done little or no planning for retirement, and there is a substantial population that seems to undersave for retirement. Of particular concern is the relative position of older women, who are more vulnerable to old-age…

Retirement Savings Portfolio Management

June 14, 2018
Retirement, retirement savings

We assess the welfare implications of alternative retirement plan investment options given that households may not invest according to optimal portfolio choice theory but may instead use simple decision rules. We simulate the performance of lifestyle, lifecycle, and other simple…

Taxes, Wages, and the Labor Supply of Older Americans

June 14, 2018
Health and Retirement Study, Labor Supply, Older workers, Social Security

The aging of the U.S. population, combined with an increasing probability that any given older individual will work, means that the importance of older workers to the labor force is rising. One possible solution to the solvency problems facing the…

Social Security Privatization with Income-Mortality Correlation

June 14, 2018
Health, Labor Supply, Mortality trends, Social Security

While privatizing Social Security can improve labor supply incentives, it can also reduce risk sharing. We simulate a 50-percent privatization using an overlapping-generations model where heterogeneous agents with elastic labor supply face idiosyncratic earnings shocks and longevity uncertainty. When wage…

The Impact of Health Insurance Availability on Retirement Decision Reversals

June 14, 2018
Health and Retirement Study, Retirement, Unretirement

This paper uses the longitudinal aspect of the Health and Retirement Survey to explore the characteristics associated with reversals in retirement (referred to here as “unretirement”). Through the use of survival time analysis, this paper show that health insurance plays…

Self-Assessed Retirement Outcomes: Determinants and Pathways

June 14, 2018
Behavioral economics, Health, Health and Retirement Study, Retirement

There is increasing interest among policy makers in measuring well-being in ways that go beyond purely economic indicators, also with special focus on older individuals who constitute an increasing fraction of the population. However there is little consensus on which…

A Dynamic Model of Retirement and Social Security Reform Expectations: A Solution to the New Early Retirement Puzzle

June 14, 2018
Life-cycle model, Retirement, Social Security, Social Security reform

The need for Social Security Reform in the next years is hardly a matter of debate. Therefore, the widespread believe among Americans that Social Security will not be able to pay benefits in the long run at the level that…

Financial Risk, Retirement, Saving and Investment

June 14, 2018
Life-cycle model, Retirement, retirement savings, Social Security

This paper considers the prospects for adding choice of portfolio composition to a life cycle model of retirement and saving, while preserving the ability of the model to continue to explain the course of saving and retirement. If eventually successful,…