It is well-established that differential mortality according to wealth or income introduces bias into age profiles of these variables when estimated on cross-sectional or synthetic cohort data. However, little is known about whether this association is also found with consumption, and if so, how...

The simple one-good model of life-cycle consumption requires “consumption smoothing.” However, British and U.S. households apparently reduce consumption at retirement and the reduction cannot be explained by the life-cycle model. An interpretation is that retirees are surprised by the...

The generosity of public pensions may depress private savings and provide incentives to retire early. While there is plenty of evidence supporting the latter effect, there remains considerable controversy as whether or not public pensions crowd out private savings. This paper uses international...

According to economic theory, well-being or utility depends on consumption. However, at the household level, total consumption is rarely well measured because its collection requires a great deal of survey time. As a result income has been widely used to assess well-being and poverty rates. Yet,...

"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. In this paper we present evidence from high-frequency data collections dedicated to tracking the effects of the financial crisis and...