2008 – Publication Years

Pension Reform in Mexico: The Evolution of Pension Fund Management Fees and their Effect on Pension Balances

June 14, 2018
International, pensions, Retirement

In 1997 Mexico introduced Personal Retirement Accounts (PRAs) which, after a transition phase, will completely replace the pay-as-you-go (PAYG) system. We give a detailed overview of the relevant institutional framework, the market of PRA providers and how it has evolved…

How Do Lower-Income Families Think about Retirement?

June 14, 2018
Retirement, Social Security

How do low-income households think about retirement? Do they think about retirement? If so, when do they think they will retire, and what is it they plan to live on? In this paper, we present evidence on these questions based…

The Optimal Design of Social Security Benefits

June 14, 2018
Retirement, Social Security

The United States Social Security system is fairly unique in that it explicitly allows for a progressive formulation of retirement benefits by assigning a larger replacement rate to workers with small pre-retirement wages. In contrast, the public pension systems in…

Retirement Wealth Across Cohorts: The Role of Earnings Inequality and Pension Changes

June 14, 2018
Retirement, Social Security

Changes in labor markets over the past 30 years suggest upcoming changes in the distribution of wealth at retirement. Baby boom cohorts have spent the majority of their prime earnings years in a labor market with increased earnings inequality. This…

Are All Americans Saving ‘Optimally’ for Retirement?

June 14, 2018
Health and Retirement Study, Retirement, retirement savings

Many people fear that Americans are preparing poorly for retirement. But developing rigorous evidence on this issue is difficult. In this paper we briefly discuss evidence on the adequacy of retirement wealth accumulation. We conclude that existing descriptive evidence does…

Preparation for Retirement, Financial Literacy and Cognitive Resources

June 14, 2018
Cognition, Retirement

Traditional economic models assume that individuals have full information and act perfectly rationally. However, we show that there is considerable variation in financial literacy in the population and propose modeling the acquisition of financial knowledge in a human capital production…

Labor Market and Immigration Behavior of Middle-Aged and Elderly Mexicans

June 14, 2018
Labor force participation, Labor Supply, Retirement, Social Security

In this study we analyzed the retirement behavior of Mexicans with migration spells to the United States that returned to Mexico and non-migrants. Our analysis is based on rich panel data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS). Approximately…

Curing the Dutch Disease: Lessons for United States Disability Policy

June 14, 2018
Disability, Disability insurance, Financial well-being, Social Security

In the 1990s, the United States reformed welfare programs targeted on single mothers and dramatically reduced their benefit receipt while increasing their employment and economic wellbeing. Despite increasing calls to do the same for working age people with disabilities in…

Early Retirement, Labor Supply, and Benefit Withholding: The Role of the Social Security Earnings Test

June 14, 2018
Retirement, Social Security

The labor supply and benefit claiming incentives provided by the early retirement rules of the Social Security Old Age benefits program are of growing importance as the Normal Retirement Age (NRA) increases to 67, the labor force participation of Older…

The Ability of Various Measures of Fatness to Predict Application for Disability Insurance

June 14, 2018
Disability insurance

This paper compares a variety of measures of fatness (e.g. BMI, waist circumference, waist-tohip ratio, percent body fat) in terms of their ability to predict application for Social Security Disability Insurance (DI). This is possible through a recent linkage of…