We analyze the determinants of global life satisfaction in two countries (The Netherlands and the U.S.), by using both self-reports and responses to a battery of vignette questions. We find global life satisfaction of happiness is well-described by four domains: job or daily activities, social...

To analyze the effect of health on work, many studies use a simple self-assessed health measure based upon a question such as “do you have an impairment or health problem limiting the kind or amount of work you can do‘” A possible drawback of such a measure is the possibility that...

We show that people have difficulty valuing annuities, and this, instead of a preference for lumpsums, helps explain observed low annuity demand. Although the median price at which people are willing to sell an annuity stream is close to the actuarial value, many responses diverge greatly from...

We use a calibrated stochastic life-cycle model of endogenous health spending, asset accumulation and retirement to investigate the causes behind the increase in health spending and life expectancy over the period 1965-2005. We estimate that technological change along with the increase in the...

Policy makers have often argued that an additional benefit of facilitating early retirement is that it creates employment for the young. This may happen if older and younger workers are substitutes. Nowadays policy makers’ goals are to discourage early retirement to counter the economic...

The paper investigates risk attitudes among different types of individuals. We use several di erent measures of risk attitudes, including questions on choices between uncertain income streams suggested by Barsky et al. (1997) and a number of ad hoc measures. As in Barsky et al. (1997) and...

We analyze expectations of the Dutch population of ages 25 and older concerning the future generosity of Dutch state and occupational pensions, the two main pillars of the Dutch pension system. Since the summer of 2006, monthly survey data were collected on the expectations of Dutch households...

Existing studies show that individuals who retire replace some private consumption by home production, but do not consider joint behavior of couples. Here we analyze the causal effect of retirement of each partner on hours of home production of both partners in a couple. Our identification...

In this paper we use the actual rules and formulas of an occupational pension fund, the state pension fund and the tax system in the Netherlands to calculate net replacement rates at each age from 60 to 70 in full and partial retirement scenarios. We then vary the parameters of the pension...

Comparing assessments of health, job satisfaction, etc. on a subjective scale across countries or socio-economic groups is often hampered by differences in response scales across groups. Anchoring vignettes help to correct for such differences, either in parametric models (CHOPIT and extensions)...