This study explores the factors that affect an individual's happiness while transitioning into retirement. Recent studies highlight gradual retirement as an attractive option to older workers as they approach full retirement. However, it is not clear whether phasing or cold turkey makes for a...

This study explores the factors that affect an individual's happiness while transitioning into retirement. Recent studies find that workers often view the idea of gradual retirement as a more attractive alternative than a "cold turkey" or abrupt retirement. However, there is very little evidence...

In July and August 2009, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College (CRR) conducted a survey to gauge three things: 1) how people were responding to the loss of their retirement assets due to the financial crisis; 2) who was responding by increasing their expected working life; and 3)...

In the early 1980s, Congress responded to the Social Security program's long-term financing shortfall, in part, by raising the Full Retirement Age (FRA) from 65 to 67. When fully phased in, for those who turn 62 in 2022, workers will have to wait an additional two years to get the same monthly...

The increase in the full retirement age in the Social Security program provides exogenous variation in the generosity in the Disability Insurance program, based only on birth year. We exploit this variation to estimate how responsive SSDI applications are to the financial incentive to apply. We...

Objective: This article explores the effects of the timing of retirement on subjective physical and emotional health. Using panel data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we test four theory-based hypotheses about these effects — that retirements maximize health when they happen...

This article explores the effects of the timing of retirement on subjective physical and emotional health. Using panel data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we test 4 theory-based hypotheses about these effects — that retirements maximize health when they happen earlier, later,...

Much literature debates whether transitions to retirement lead to increased or reduced well-being. We attribute this controversy to the lack of theorizing on life course transitions and argue that the effects of such transitions depend on their characteristics such as speed (gradual/abrupt),...