This paper investigates how increases in the level of maximum earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax have affected Social Security benefits and taxes. The analysis uses data from the Health and Retirement Study to ask how different the present value of own benefits and taxes would...

This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study to explore the mechanism that underlies the robust relation found in the literature between cognitive ability, and in particular numeracy, and wealth, income constant. We have a number of findings. First, the more valuable the pension,...

Studies using data from the early 1990s suggested that while the progressive Social Security benefit formula succeeded in redistributing benefits from individuals with high earnings to individuals with low earnings, it was much less successful in redistributing benefits from households with high...

This paper specifies three behavioral variants of a structural model of retirement and saving to bring predicted Social Security claiming rates closer to the rates observed in the data. The model, estimated with Health and Retirement Study data, is used to examine three potential policies:...

This paper applies structural models of retirement and saving of two earner couples to explore the effects on retirement of two actuarially neutral policies, which we know from previous work can have a substantial effect on retirement if heterogeneity in time preference rates is allowed. The...

The President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security suggests three plans for reforming Social Security. These plans divert various amounts of the payroll tax to a personal account if the worker chooses to participate in the account. In return, Social Security benefits are offset using...

This paper specifies and estimates a structural life cycle model of retirement and wealth and applies that model both to understand the role of the social security early entitlement age in creating a peak in retirements at age 62, and to simulate the effects of postponing the Social Security...

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we examine the effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on retirement. We first calculate retirements (and in related analyses changes in expected ages of retirement and/or Social Security claiming) between 2010, before ACA, and 2014, after ACA,...

The composition, wealth, and employment of male veterans and nonveterans are analyzed for four cohorts from the Health and Retirement Study, ages 51 to 56 in 1992, 1998, 2004, and 2010. Half of the two oldest cohorts served in the military. Only 16 percent of the youngest cohort, the only cohort...