We studied how households adjust their spending in response to the financial crisis. Based on five waves of data from the Consumption and Activities Mail Survey, we quantified the reduction in total consumption and in specific categories of consumption in the older population at large and by...

This paper forecasts the retirement patterns and resources of the Early Baby Boomers by estimating forward-looking dynamic models of labor force participation, wealth accumulation and pension and Social Security benefit claiming for older workers using seven waves of HRSdata. The two most...

Most assessments of the adequacy of retirement resources are expressed as a comparison of preretirement income to immediate post-retirement income. Yet, among couples a substantial fraction of retirement years is eventually spent by the surviving spouse living alone. To the extent that singles...

Traditional economic models assume that individuals have full information and act perfectly rationally. However, we show that there is considerable variation in financial literacy in the population and propose modeling the acquisition of financial knowledge in a human capital production...

The Social Security trust fund is predicted to be depleted by 2041. While there are several viable reform proposals to restore long-term solvency of the Social Security system, one important element that is critical to the success of any reform remains unknown: how will individuals respond to,...

The most common metric for assessing the adequacy of economic preparation for retirement is the income replacement rate, the ratio of income after retirement to income before retirement. However both economic theory and common sense say that someone is adequately prepared if she is able to...

In 1997 Mexico introduced Personal Retirement Accounts (PRAs) which, after a transition phase, will completely replace the pay-as-you-go (PAYG) system. We give a detailed overview of the relevant institutional framework, the market of PRA providers and how it has evolved since the 1997 reform....

There is increasing interest among policy makers in measuring well-being in ways that go beyond purely economic indicators, also with special focus on older individuals who constitute an increasing fraction of the population. However there is little consensus on which other indicators should be...

Earlier research suggests that many people in their fifties and early sixties are not well informed about their Social Security benefit entitlements in old age. This paper investigates the effect of deviations between individuals’ anticipated and realized Social Security benefits on several...

The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is a long-running panel survey with good measures of economic status, so it is the pre-eminent data set for studies about the economic status of the older population and economic preparation for retirement. However, the HRS expends considerably fewer...