This paper investigates individuals' expectations about their own survival to older ages and compares patterns in average responses about survival chances with actual and projected survival rates. The extent to which individuals have, on average, accurate expectations about survival to older...

The "annuity puzzle" refers to the fact that annuities are rarely purchased despite the longevity insurance they provide. Most explanations for this puzzle assume that individuals have accurate expectations about their future survival. We provide evidence that individuals mis-perceive their...

Delaying retirement has significant positive effects on the average cognition and physical mobility of women in England, at least in the short run. Exploiting the increase in employment of 60-63 year old women resulting from the increase in the female State Pension Age, we show that working...

In the UK, those born between the 1930s and 1950s have seen generation-on-generation increases in wealth, while those born more recently appear to have accumulated no more wealth than their predecessors had done by the same age. There is debate over the drivers, and therefore implications, of...

Although older generations have substantially more wealth than their recent predecessors did at the same age, younger generations do not. Bringing together UK data on those born between the 1930s and 1980s and a lifecycle model of saving, I quantify whether this is due to changes in preferences...

We document key patterns in the flow of significant gifts and loans between friends and family in Great Britain, using newly-available data from the Wealth and Assets Survey. We identify a number of new stylised facts. Gifts and loans are generally intergenerational transfers: 83% of the value...

Understanding the drivers of wealth transfers during life is crucial to understanding the intergenerational transmission of inequality, the optimal design of social insurance, and the efficacy of expansionary fiscal policy. To shed light on this, we analyse the relationships between giving and...

Much of the focus of the UK pensions policy debate over the past decade has been on the adequacy (or otherwise) of private retirement saving. In this paper, we present the first assessment of the optimality of the retirement resources of English couple households born in the 1940s. Here,...

Using a model where households can save in either a safe asset or in an illiquid, tax-advantaged pension, we assess the extent to which those who recently reached the state pension age in the UK have saved optimally for retirement. The policy environment specified closely matches that prevailing...

This paper compares consumption and income as measures of households' living standards using UK data. It presents evidence that income is likely to be under-recorded for households with low resources. It describes the different impressions one gets about trends in the level and inequality of...