2010 – Publication Years

How Financial Literacy and Impatience Shape Retirement Wealth and Investment Behaviors

June 14, 2018
Behavioral economics, Financial well-being, Retirement, retirement savings

Two competing explanations for why consumers have trouble with financial decisions are gaining momentum. One is that people are financially illiterate since they lack understanding of simple economic concepts and cannot carry out computations such as computing compound interest, which…

How Financial Literacy and Impatience Shape Retirement Wealth and Investment Behaviors

June 14, 2018
Behavioral economics, Financial well-being, Retirement, retirement savings

The Growth in Social Security Benefits Among the Retirement Age Population from Increases in the Cap on Covered Earnings

June 14, 2018
Health and Retirement Study, Older workers, Payroll taxes, Retirement, Social Security

Cognitive Ability and Retiree Health Care Expenditure

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

Prior research indicates that retirees with less cognitive ability are at greater financial risk because they have lower incomes yet higher medical expenditures. Linking HRS data to administrative records, we evaluate two hypotheses about why this group spends more on…

The Joint Labor Supply Decision of Married Couples and the Social Security Pension System

June 14, 2018
benefit claiming, Labor Supply, pensions, Social Security, Social Security spousal benefits

The Joint Labor Supply Decision of Married Couples and the Social Security Pension System

June 14, 2018
benefit claiming, Labor Supply, pensions, Social Security, Social Security spousal benefits

The current U.S. Social Security program redistributes resources from high wage workers to low wage workers and from two-earner couples to one-earner couples. The present paper extends a standard general-equilibrium overlapping-generations model with uninsurable wage shocks to analyze the effect…

The Growth in Social Security Benefits Among the Retirement Age Population from Increases in the Cap on Covered Earnings

June 14, 2018
Health and Retirement Study, Older workers, Payroll taxes, Retirement, Social Security

This paper investigates how increases in the level of maximum earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax have affected Social Security benefits and taxes. The analysis uses data from the Health and Retirement Study to ask how different the…

The Effects of the Financial Crisis on the Well-Being of Older Americans: Evidence from the Cognitive Economics Study

June 14, 2018
Financial well-being, Health, Older workers

This paper uses the Cognitive Economics Study (CogEcon) to assess the effect of the financial crisis on the well-being of older Americans. Financial wealth fell by about 15 percent for the median household. These financial losses were concentrated among households…

Cognitive Ability and Retiree Health Care Expenditure

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

Mortgage Contract Decisions and Mortgage Distress: Family and Financial Life-Cycle Factors

June 14, 2018
Family dynamics, Financial well-being, Life-cycle model