Housing wealth is a largely untapped resource that can help older adults supplement their incomes and buffer financial shocks in retirement. The federally insured reverse mortgage offers adults age 62 and older access to home equity with no required monthly payment, and protection for homeowners...

Retirement-account balances are lower among women than men. This study assesses the role of financial knowledge and empowerment in contributing to the gender gap in savings. We evaluate the effects of financial education delivered to women in the workplace, using administrative data on 31,000...

This paper uses repeated cross-sectional data from the Surveys of Consumer Finances (SCF) to characterize cohort patterns of net worth and debt of American households. Cohort patterns provide a useful benchmark for identifying potentially vulnerable households based on relative financial...

Evidence shows that people have difficulty understanding complex aspects of retirement planning, which leads them to under-utilize annuities and claim Social Security benefits earlier than is optimal. To target this problem, we developed vignettes about the consequences of different...