This paper analyzes a prospective Social Security reform that a number of authors have suggested, namely a payroll tax cut targeted on households near retirement. Our approach uses simulations of a life-cycle model, which we estimate from panel data. The simulations study effects on the labor...

The Office of Retirement and Disability Policy at the Social Security Administration created the Retirement Research Consortium in 1998 to encourage research on topics related to Social Security and the well-being of older Americans, and to foster communication between the academic and policy...

This paper analyzes the effect of a potential reform to the Social Security system on individuals' retirement and consumption choices. We first estimate the coefficients for a life-cycle model. We assume intratemporally nonseparable preference orderings and endogenous retirement. Our framework...

To study the role of home production in life¿cycle behavior, this paper creates a theoretical model in which both spouses in a couple allocate their time between market and home work. It then derives a pair of regression equations for estimating the parameters of the model, and it carries out...

Economists have long thought of technological progress as a primary determinant of rising living standards over time. One might think of technological progress as increasing the "effectiveness" of labor, thereby raising the amount of output that each unit of labor can produce. The purpose of...

Using pseudo-panel data, we estimate the structural parameters of a life-cycle consumption model with discrete labor supply choice. A focus of our analysis is the abrupt drop in consumption upon retirement for a typical household. The literature sometimes refers to the drop, which in the U.S....

Economists' principal tool for studying household behavioral responses to changes in tax and other government policies, and the magnitude and determinants of private saving, is the life-cycle model. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to incorporate into that model one of the most...