This article examines how the availability of annuities affects savings and inequality in economies in which neither private nor public pensions initially exist. The absence of widespread market or government annuity insurance is clearly descriptive of many less developed countries in the world...

This is the first paper to document the effect of health on the migration propensities of African Americans in the American past. Using both IPUMS and the Colored Troops Sample of the Civil War Union Army Data, I estimate the effects of literacy and health on the migration propensities of...

A new empirical study of the relation between money, nominal income, prices, and real output in postwar quarterly U.S. data rejects virtually all of the conclusions reached by Families provide individuals with risk sharing opportunities which may not otherwise be available. Within the family...

Social Security is widely believed to protect its recipients from inflation because benefits are indexed to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). However, the CPI-W may not accurately reflect the experience of retirees for two reasons. First, retirees...

Media reports predicted that the stock market decline in October 2008 would cause changes in retirement intentions, due to declines in retirement assets. We use panel data from the Health and Retirement Study to investigate the relationship between stock market performance and retirement...

Despite the presence of Medicare, out-of-pocket medical spending is a large expenditure risk facing the elderly. While women live longer than men, elderly women incur higher out-of-pocket medical spending than men at each age. In this paper, we examine whether differences in marital status and...

Social Security benefits may be commenced at any time between ages 62 and 70. As individuals who claim later can, on average, expect to receive benefits for a shorter period, an actuarial adjustment is made to the monthly benefit to reflect the age at which benefits are claimed. In earlier work...

Most private sector workers with employer-provided health insurance have a strong incentive to continue working until Medicare eligibility in order to maintain group health coverage. However, most government employees have access to retiree health coverage, which allows them access to group...

Despite the large and growing returns to deferring Social Security benefits, most individuals claim Social Security before the full retirement age, currently age 66. In this paper, we use a panel of administrative tax data on likely primary earners to explore some potential hypotheses of why...

Simple presentations of the life cycle model often suggest a constant level of real consumption in retirement. Similarly, financial planners commonly suggest that people save for retirement in such a way as to enable them to maintain a level retirement standard of living equal to their standard...