Relatively little is known about why people fail to plan for retirement and whether planning and information costs might affect retirement saving patterns. This chapter reports on a purpose-built survey module on planning and financial literacy for the Health and Retirement Study which measures...

We analyze older individuals' debt and financial vulnerability using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS). Specifically, in the HRS we examine three different cohorts (individuals age 56–61) in 1992, 2004, and 2010 to evaluate...

This paper uses administrative data on all active employees of the Federal Reserve System to examine participation in and contributions to the Thrift Saving Plan, the system's defined contribution (DC) plan. We have appended to the administrative records a unique employee survey of...

This paper analyzes Americans’ perceptions of being debt constrained. We focus on which population subgroups reported feeling most debt constrained, how this perception was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how it relates to financial literacy and retirement readiness. To this end, we...

Recent research documents that people are increasingly entering old age with more debt than ever before and with little or no retirement planning. This paper examines some reasons why older people’s financial behaviors depart from the predictions of the life-cycle model, where the latter...

We examine respondents in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to observe how their financial situations unfolded as they aged. We focus on low-income older adults and follow them over time to identify the factors associated with having low income at baseline and thereafter. We find that (a)...