This paper assesses how retirement - defined as permanent labor force non-participation in a man's mature years - affects psychological welfare. The raw correlation between retirement and well-being is negative. But this does not imply causation. In particular, people with idiosyncratically low...

This paper assesses how retirement - defined as permanent labor force non-participation in a man's mature years - affects psychological welfare. The raw correlation between retirement and well-being is negative. But this does not imply causation. In particular, people with idiosyncratically low...

Data from the Health and Retirement Study indicate that hours constraints are a common feature of jobs held by workers nearing retirement. We present a simple model that predicts that workers who are not free to lower their usual hours of work should be more likely than their unconstrained...

This paper summarizes five facts that have emerged from the recent literature on consumption behavior during retirement. Collectively, the recent literature has shown that there is no puzzle with respect to the spending patterns of most households as they transition into retirement. In...