This paper proposes and analyzes a life-cycle model of consumption by couples. The model is considerably more complicated than the standard model for singles because it has to account for the welfare of a surviving spouse. The determinants of consumption are the survival paths of each spouse,...

Empirical studies have indicated that the elderly seem to accumulate wealth after retirement, and that the desire to leave bequests is an important determinent of saving behavior, both kinds of results have cast doubt on the validity of the life cycle hypothesis of consumption. In the first part...

The Stone-Geary utility function defined over an index of goods, the leisure of the husband, and the leisure of the wife is used to derive the earnings functions of the husband and the wife. The parameters of the utility function are estimated from the parameters of the earnings functions in a...

The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and a number of other major household surveys use unfolding brackets to reduce item nonresponse. However, the initial entry point into a bracketing sequence is likely to act as an anchor or point of reference to the respondent: The distribution of responses...

This paper reviews and analyzes forecasts of the Social Security trust funds, government spending, medical expenditures, and other elements of aggregate income and spending. According to these forecasts, the aging of the U.S. population will require some increases in taxes to support the...

Most older workers retire completely from full-time work with no intervening spell of part-time work. This is incompatible with a model of retirement in which tastes for work gradually shift with age toward leisure and hours may be freely chosen. A survey of institutional arrangements such as...