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We derive the optimal portfolio choice over the life-cycle for households facing labor income, capital market, and mortality risk. In addition to stocks and bonds, households also have access to incomplete annuity markets offering a hedge against mortality risk. We show that a considerable...

This project explores the process by which older workers apply for, and are awarded, Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) benefits. Our focus is on how and whether DI serves as a path out of the labor market at older ages. This research is important to the extent that proposals to raise the...

This study finds that on average those just past the usual retirement age are adequately prepared for retirement in that they will be able to follow a path of consumption that begins at their current level of consumption and then follows an age-pattern similar to that of current retirees. That...

The aging of the U.S. population, combined with an increasing probability that any given older individual will work, means that the importance of older workers to the labor force is rising. One possible solution to the solvency problems facing the Social Security System is increasing the labor...

Using generalized method of moments on the covariance matrix, I test three models of consumption change on constructed consumption data from the Health and Retirement Study. Meant as a first step towards estimating life-cycle effects of subjective survival probabilities on consumption profiles,...

After dropping for a century, the average retirement age for U.S. males seems to have leveled off in recent decades. An important question is whether as future improvements in technology cause wages to rise, desired retirement ages will resume their downward trend, or not. This paper attempts to...

We find that, over their 1990s business cycles, the entire distribution of after-tax household size-adjusted income moved to the right in the United States and Great Britain while inequality declined. In contrast, Germany and Japan had less income growth, a rise in inequality and a decline in...

Social Security benefits depend on the employment and earnings history of the covered worker, but, especially for women, they depend on one’s marital history and the employment and earnings history of one’s spouse. This paper examines the interrelationship between marriage, divorce,...

The responsibility to save and contribute to a pension is increasingly left to the individual worker. Understanding how households save and prepare for retirement is of paramount importance. There is concern in the U.S. that many families have little or no wealth even close to retirement. In...