Cross-national comparisons of data from developed countries offer useful insights into the retirement process and policy. Here we summarize findings for older persons age 50-70 using new microdata files collected by the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR) project, and we compare these...

Analysts using the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) often require information on earnings, labor market attachment, and social security benefits in order to better understand the factors affecting retirement and well-being at older ages. To this end, several derived variables were constructed...

Policymaker and media attention has recently focused on the rise of the so-called “gig” or freelance employment sector, where workers lack formal long-term relationships with one specific firm. This topic has captured public interest partly because of concern that those engaged in...

Baby Boomers have left a unique imprint on US culture and society in the last 60 years, and it might be anticipated that they will also put their own stamp on retirement, the last phase of the life cycle. Yet because Boomers have not all fully retired, we cannot yet judge how they will fare as...

We investigate how the Japanese pension market for funded employment-based pensions is changing and how it might be strengthened in order to better serve one of the most rapidly aging populations in the world. Public and private pensions in Japan are estimated to hold around US$3 trillion,...