While privatizing Social Security can improve labor supply incentives, it can also reduce risk sharing when households face uninsurable risks. We simulate a stylized 50-percent privatization using an overlapping-generations model where heterogeneous agents with elastic labor supply face...

Security markets between generations are incomplete in the laissez-faire economy since risk sharing agreements cannot be made with the unborn. But suppose that generations could trade if, for example, a representative of the unborn negotiated on their behalf today. What would the trades look...

In April of 2013, the Pension Research Council of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania convened a Technical Review Panel, comprising ten experts whose task it was to review the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation's (PBGC) Pension Insurance Modeling System (PIMS), including...

Social Security Administration W-2 records contain employee annual tax-deferred contributions for 1990-2003 and sufficient information to calculate tax-deferred contributions for 1984-1989. We use this information to compare tax-deferred contribution profiles of three cohorts of respondents in...

Though millions of US workers have 401(k) plans, few studies evaluate participant investment performance. Using data on over 1,000 401(k) plans and their participants, we identify key portfolio investment inefficiencies and attribute them to offered investment menus versus individual portfolio...

Many economic analyses of public policy issues are based upon the life-cycle model of household behavior. The usual formulation omits private intergenerational transfers. This paper considers the possibility of a more sophisticated formulation that includes the latter. We examine 1992-2008 HRS...

This study explores the relationship between general human capital investment, financial knowledge, occupational spillovers, and the accumulation of wealth in a primarily descriptive manner. Drawing upon human capital theory and following previous related work by Delavande, Rohwedder and Willis...

Studies of adolescents and young adults have shown that schooling impacts economic outcomes beyond its impact on cognitive ability. Research has also shown that the personality trait of conscientiousness predicts health outcomes, academic outcomes, and divorce. Using the Big Five taxonomy of...

After retirement, the primary sources of uncertainty with respect to an individual's economic status are longevity, investment outcomes and out-of-pocket spending on health care. In previous work, we estimated economic preparation for retirement, taking into account the risk of living to an...

We study the effects of the 2007-2009 recession on the population age 55 and older. Households in and near retirement have suffered sizeable losses in assets as a result of the economic crisis. There are a number of ways in which households might respond: reduce spending and with that increase...