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....

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...

According to economic theory, well-being or utility depends on consumption. However, at the household level, total consumption is rarely measured because its collection requires a great deal of survey time. As a result income has been widely used to assess economic well-being and poverty rates....

The simple one-good model of life-cycle consumption requires "consumption smoothing." However, British and U.S. households apparently reduce consumption at retirement and the reduction cannot be explained by the life-cycle model. An interpretation is that retirees are surprised by the inadequacy...

This paper studies rates of saving and consumption among the recently retired during the 1980s. It also documents outlays associated with the death of a spouse to find the causes of wealth loss at widowhood.

The goal of this paper is to analyze a model to explain consumption by couples. It is an extension fo the model for singles by Yaari (1195), and therefore emphasizes the role of mortality risk. It also allows for what I call a "true" bequest motive, bequeathing by a couple to the next...

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...

The authors examine how the large increase in wealth in the mid- to late 1990s affected retirement and consumption behavior. Specifically, the authors investigate how gains from stock holdings were spent.

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 simple one-good model of life-cycle consumption requires "consumption smoothing." According to previous results based on partial spending and on synthetic panels, British and U.S. households apparently reduce consumption at retirement. The reduction cannot be explained by the simple one-good...