2017 – Publication Years

The Effect of Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansion on Post-Displacement Labor Supply among the Near-Elderly

June 14, 2018
Affordable Care Act, Health reform, Labor force participation, Labor Supply

Expanded health-insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) provides alternative channels to obtain health-insurance coverage outside employment, which in theory may affect whether people want to work, how much they work, and the sorting of individuals into jobs. Although…

Parents with an Unemployed Adult Child: Labor Supply, Consumption, and Savings Effects

June 14, 2018
Family dynamics, Financial well-being, Labor Supply, retirement savings

The risk of labor market, health, and asset-value shocks comprise profound retirement savings challenges for older workers. Parents, however, may experience added risk if their children experience adverse labor market shocks. Prior research has shown that parents support their children…

The Impact of Health on Labor Supply Near Retirement

June 14, 2018
Health, Labor Supply, Retirement

Understanding Earnings, Labor Supply, and Retirement Decisions

June 14, 2018
Health, Labor force participation, Payroll taxes, Retirement, retirement savings, Social Security reform

We develop and estimate a model in which individuals make decisions on consumption, human capital investment, labor supply, and retirement. Unlike all previous work, our model allows both an endogenous wage process (which is typically assumed exogenous in the human…

The Reintroduction of the Social Security Statement and its Effect on Social Security Expectations, Retirement Savings, and Labor Supply across the Age Distribution

June 14, 2018
Financial well-being, Labor force participation, retirement savings, Social Security, Social Security program communications

This paper examines how the 2014 reintroduction of the Social Security statement, staggered by every fifth birth year, affected American Life Panel respondents’ Social Security expectations, savings behavior, and labor supply. The rich panel design of the ALP allows for…

Long-Term Effects of Leaving Military Service in a Weak Economy

June 14, 2018
Health and Retirement Study, Labor force participation, retirement savings, Veterans

Previous research finds negative effects in the short and medium term for those who initially entered the labor force during weak labor markets. Discerning the effects of initial market conditions is difficult as young workers may attempt to time their…

The Effect of Physical and Cognitive Decline at Older Ages on Work and Retirement: Evidence from Occupational Job Demands and Job Mismatch

June 14, 2018
Cognition, Health, Labor force participation, Older workers, Retirement

As workers age, their physical and cognitive abilities tend to decline. This could lead to a mismatch between workers’ resources and the demands of their jobs, restricting future work. We use longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS)…

Work-Life Balance and Labor Force Attachment at Older Ages

June 14, 2018
Family dynamics, Health, Health and Retirement Study, Older workers

We use data from the Health and Retirement Study to examine the role of work-life balance (WLB) as a nonmonetary determinant of retirement transitions, conditional on job attributes such as hours of work, compensation and benefits. We show that low…

2015 American Working Conditions Survey: Focus on Older Versus Younger Workers

June 14, 2018
Older workers

In this report we highlight findings on the differing job demands of older versus younger workers from the 2015 American Working Conditions Survey (AWCS), a new nationally representative survey of U.S. workers ages 25-71. We find that generally older workers…

Adjusting the Payroll Tax to Promote Longer Careers

June 14, 2018
Life-cycle model, Payroll taxes, Social Security reform

This paper analyzes a prospective Social Security reform that a number of authors have suggested, namely a payroll tax cut targeted on households near retirement. Our approach uses simulations of a life-cycle model, which we estimate from panel data. The…