Policy initiatives such as increases in the full retirement age implicitly reduce benefits for early retirement. Yet research suggests that those in physically demanding jobs may be particularly adversely affected by such policies. We examine to what extent physical job demand relates to early...

This study uses the Health and Retirement Study to deepen our understanding of nonworking adults ages 51 to 61 and how they support themselves before qualifying for Social Security benefits. The results show that nonworking adults ages 51 to 61 are a heterogeneous group. A large share is poor,...

Although government expansion of health insurance to older workers leads to labor supply reductions for recipients, there may be spillover effects on the labor supply of affected spouses who are not covered by the programs. In the simplest model, health insurance on the job is paid for in terms...

Despite being well recognized by economists as an important social and economic force, private transfers are still little understood, and considerable debate surrounds basic questions, such as whether or how private and public transfers might interact. Nearly all empirical work to date has...

We study the household portfolios of the elderly using data from the Health and Retirement Study. In particular, we investigate the influence of aging and health shocks on both a household’s ownership of various assets and the dollar value and share of total assets held in each asset class. We...

Using the Lee-Carter mortality model, we quantify aggregate mortality risk, the risk that annuitants might live longer than predicted by the model. We calculate that a markup of 4.3 percent on an annuity premium, or else shareholders’ capital equal to 4.3 percent of the expected present value...

Workers drain national resources in two ways when they retire – they begin collecting Social Security and Medicare benefits and they stop paying federal income and payroll taxes. Policies that encourage workers to delay retirement and increase labor supply could generate more gains to...

Over the past decade, a number of countries have adopted a new form of pension system known as “notional defined contribution” (NDC) pensions. Like traditional defined benefit (DB) pensions, NDC pensions operate largely on a pay-as-you-go basis, but base benefits on total lifetime...

Past studies that examine gender differences in investment decisions have treated married households as a single decision- making unit. This study improves upon traditional unitary bargaining models and estimates a series of unitary and collective-type models to investigate how a husband’s age...

This paper highlights geographic regions gaining and losing investment and social security income (collectively referred to as nonearnings income) through migration of baby boomers and their predecessors. There is a consistent Rustbelt to Sunbelt shift in nonearnings income due to migration, as...