2007
The Future of American Fertility
The level of fertility in a population is the principal determinant of the shape of its age structure, which in turn is a critical factor in the terms of trade within a pay-as-you-go system of public pensions. Fertility has fallen…
Children and Household Wealth
This paper focuses on the effects that children have on life-cycle wealth accumulation. We start examining the effects of children using a simple permanent income model with no uncertainty and complete markets. But this framework does not come close to…
Life-cycle Asset Allocation with Annuity Markets: Is Longevity Insurance a Good Deal?
We derive the optimal portfolio choice over the life-cycle for households facing labor income, capital market, and mortality risk. In addition to stocks and bonds, households also have access to incomplete annuity markets offering a hedge against mortality risk. We…
Inflation Bets or Deflation Hedges? The Changing Risks of Nominal Bonds
The covariance between US Treasury bond returns and stock returns has moved considerably over time. While it was slightly positive on average in the period 1953— 2005, it was particularly high in the early 1980’s and negative in the early…
The Impact of Employer Matching on Savings Plan Participation under Automatic Enrollment
Existing research has documented the large impact that automatic enrollment has on savings plan participation. All the companies examined in these studies, however, have combined automatic enrollment with an employer match. This raises a question about how effective automatic enrollment…
Why Are Companies Freezing Their Pensions?
The shift in pension coverage from defined benefit plans to 401(k)s has been underway since 1981. This shift was the result of three developments: 1) the addition of 401(k) provisions to existing thrift and profit sharing plans; 2) a surge…
The Role of Governance in Retirement Investments: Evidence from Variable Annuities
We study the relative importance of market governance and non-market governance in retirement investments using a sample of variable annuities. Variable annuity investors are significantly less sensitive to performance and fees than mutual fund investors. Consistent with a complementary role…
Consumption and Income Poverty for Those 65 and Over
This paper examines income and consumption based measures of poverty for those 65 and over between 1972 and 2004. This study contributes to the existing literature on poverty in several ways. First, we construct consumption based measures of poverty that…
Future Beneficiary Expectations of the Returns to Delayed Social Security Benefit Claiming and Choice Behavior
We report on our preliminary findings from an innovative module of survey questions in the RAND American Life Panel designed to measure willingness to delay take-up of Social Security benefits. Among respondents who expect to stop working full time prior…