A Quarterly Newsletter provides updates on current MRRC projects including recent research findings as well as information about upcoming events and information that may be of interest to the academic and policy communities. Join our mailing list for this publication.

Policy Briefs offer summary and analysis of current issues in Social Security, retirement and pension policy.

Working Papers provide rapid dissemination of MRRC research findings. Many working papers are later published in journals and books. Bound copies of working papers are available on request.

Research Briefs offer concise summaries of key research findings from MRRC projects.

In the Researcher Q&A series our affiliated researchers discuss the findings and implications of their MRRC-supported research.

Conference Papers from the Annual Meeting of the Retirement Research Consortium are available for all presentations.

All MRRC publications may be printed directly from this website.

All Publications

2023

Retirement Pensions and Disability Insurance for the 21st Century

WP 2023-455 , UM22-02
This project estimates the degree of disability risk among the United States and English over-50 populations. Using a disability measure that closely matches the criteria used by English and U.S. disability systems, we find both higher levels of disability in…

Traditional and Nontraditional Earnings: Demographic, Financial, and Beneficiary Patterns

WP 2023-456 , UM22-06
We use the 2014 and 2018 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation to create a schema of earnings that come from employee and nonemployee sources. Traditional earnings are from a job or incorporated business, while nontraditional earnings…

How Does Social Security Affect the Racial Wealth Gap?

WP 2023-459 , UM22-10
The large and persistent gap by race in U.S. household wealth is a well-established empirical fact, though the causal mechanisms for wealth differentials are still a subject of much debate. Previous research on wealth inequality has shown that expanding the…

Disparities in Social Security Knowledge and the Role of Social Capital

WP 2023-458 , UM22-12
In this paper, we develop a new survey that seeks to better understand how differences in information sources (both formal and informal) across racial and ethnic groups contribute to knowledge and planning for retirement. We consider several scenarios where people…

Bridging Employment for Older Workers and the Role of Flexible Scheduling Arrangements

WP 2023-453 , UM20-15
We conduct a series of stated preference experiments to determine the willingness of hiring and human resource managers to pay for certain job attributes. A cross section of U.S. hiring managers were given experimental vignettes about an existing employee or…

Assessing the First Economic Impact Payment in the Older Population Using the Health and Retirement Study

WP 2023-454 , UM21-17
We use data collected by the Health and Retirement Study in its 2020 wave to study awareness and impact of the Economic Impact Payment stimulus on different groups of older Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.

2022

Explanations for the Decline in Spending at Older Ages

WP 2022-440 , UM21-10
We use new data from the 2019 wave of the Consumption and Activities Mail Survey to help interpret the observed decline in spending as individuals age. At one extreme, forward-looking individuals optimally chose the decline; at the other, myopic individuals…

How Redistributive Are Public Health Care Schemes? Evidence from Medicare and Medicaid in Old Age

WP 2022-441 , UM20-10
Most health care for the U.S. population 65 and older is publicly provided through Medicare and Medicaid. Despite the massive expenditures of these systems, little is known about how redistributive they are. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study…
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