The authors examine how public and private pension and health insurance systems affect retirement transitions. In many countries, public and private pension eligibility, as well as access to health insurance varies between self-employed and wage and salary workers, and these differences are...

According to the life-cycle model, mortality risk will influence both retirement and the desire to annuitize wealth. The authors estimate the effect of subjective survival probabilities on retirement and on the claiming of Social Security benefits because delayed claiming is equivalent to the...

Many countries are including personal retirement accounts (PRAs) as part of their social security systems. PRA systems boost private savings at the macro level by converting a government financial liability into private wealth. At the micro level, however, crowing-out effects on household...

Este estudio compara las diferencias de cobertura en los sistemas de pensiones de capitalizacion individual en tres pa’ses de Latinoamerica. En Chile, Colombia y Mexico, aun cuando cada uno de ellos tiene sistema de pensiones de contribuciones definidas, hay diferencias significativas en el...

Inter-vivos cash transfers and bequests between family members total hundreds of billions of dollars each year. They may equalize resources within a generation of a family as well as across family generations. Transfers delayed to the end of life may represent a significant motive for saving....

The Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old (AHEAD) study shows a large increase in reported total wealth between 1993 and 1995. Such an increase is not found in other US household surveys around that period. This paper examines one source of this difference. The authors find that in...

This study provides new evidence on trends in disability among the elderly from 1982 to 1996. Logistics analysis is used to estimate the trend in disability prevalence after controlling for age, sex, and proxy reporting. The sample includes 124,949 people ages 70 and older in the 1982-1996...

Inter-vivos cash transfers and bequests between family members total hundreds of billions of dollars each year. They may equalize resources within a generation of a family as well as across family generations. Transfers delayed to the end of life may represent a significant motive for saving....