Publications

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…

Social science, more than ever, is drawing upon the insights of personality psychology. Though researchers now know that noncognitive skills and personality traits, such as conscientiousness, grit, self-control, or a growth mindset could be important for life outcomes, they struggle…

Estimates of effect of health on employment differ from study to study due to differences in methods, data, institutional background and health measure. We assess the importance of these differences, using a unified framework to interpret and contrast estimate for…

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…

We provide evidence from a field experiment — a correspondence study — on age discrimination in hiring for retail sales jobs. We collect experimental data in all 50 states and then relate measured age discrimination — the difference in callback…

Many of the most important government programs make transfers in kind as opposed to in cash. Making transfers in kind has the obvious cost that recipients would at least weakly prefer cost-equivalent cash transfers. But making transfers in kind can…

Chile initiated in 1981 a privately managed, individual-account pension system that inspired similar reforms in many Latin American countries, and that has been considered as a possible model for Social Security in the United States. After 30 years in place,…

There has been much concern over the provision of long-term care and the stresses it imposes on the family members who provide that care. However, despite the importance of this issue, it has been difficult to assess a causal relationship…

Same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in the United States on June 26, 2015. Federal legalization of same-sex marriage expands the pool of individuals potentially eligible for spousal Social Security benefits to the estimated 4 percent of the population that is…