This analysis uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine the sources of variation in mortality for individuals of varying socioeconomic status. The use of the HRS allows a distinction between education and a measure of career earnings as primary determinants of socioeconomic...

The rising cost of U.S. health care has reduced the share of compensation that is taxable by Social Security. Between 1960 and 2010, non-taxable employer premiums for worker health plans increased from 1 percent of employee compensation to 7 percent. We use international data to examine the...

Each year the Board of Trustees of the Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Trust Funds projects the future financial status of the programs extending as far as 75-years into the future. These projections incorporate anticipated trends in both demographic and economic determinants...

This paper provides an examination of the decline in the household saving rate over the past two decades from both the macroeconomic and microeconomic perspectives. Between 1980-84 and 2000-04 private saving fell more than 8 percentage points of U.S. GDP. At the aggregate level, about 40 percent...

The Great Recession had a large impact on unemployment rates and growth in wealthy industrial countries. When the recession began most rich countries were experiencing an increase in labor force participation rates after age 60. This paper examines whether the downturn slowed or reversed the...

As the baby-boom generation enters retirement, a long-forecast funding crisis of the U.S. Social Security system is about to become a reality. Many other high-income countries are faced with similar financial problems within their public pension systems. Some of those countries have adopted...

This paper focuses on an explanation for the large shift over the past two decades in the composition of the income of the aged (65+), increasing the role of earned income and reducing the importance of income from their own assets. We find that the pattern of change is consistently reported in...

Pension reform can potentially increase saving and improve incentives for labor force participation later in life. We investigate whether these effects are likely to occur and the potential size of the effects on private and total saving and on employment past age 55. Our survey of existing...

We examine the saving decline from the perspective of microeconomic survey data on the wealth position of American households. Can the surveys provide information on the nature and causes of the saving decline that are not evident in the macroeconomic information? The analysis concentrates on...

This paper presents an overview of changes in household wealth accumulation and saving using wealth data from three micro-level surveys: Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), and Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We provide comparisons to the macroeconomic...