This paper presents results based on a survey fielded in the RAND American Life Panel that queried older workers about their current, desired, and expected job characteristics, and about how certain job characteristics would affect their retirement. Having access to flexible work hours was found...

We use panel data at the household level on a complete inventory of household spending and assets to estimate the spending response to the sharp and largely unexpected declines in house and stock market prices that occurred in the Great Recession. Our data span the period 2001-2011, so that we...

In this report, we present improved wealth measures for the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), which aim to reduce the effect of observation error on wealth levels and changes in wealth. The new wealth measures take account of the asset verification section in the HRS and use cross-wave...

As workers age, their physical and cognitive abilities tend to decline. This could lead to a mismatch between workers' resources and the demands of their jobs, restricting future work. We use longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) linked to detailed occupational...

Based on the belief that many people have under-saved and that the reason for under-saving is procrastination, paternalistic nudging to foster saving is often advocated by policy researchers. However, there is little empirical evidence that on hindsight individuals would wish to have saved more...

The simple one-good model of life-cycle consumption requires "consumption smoothing." According to previous results based on partial spending and on synthetic panels, British and U.S. households apparently reduce consumption at retirement. The reduction cannot be explained by the simple one-good...

Physical and cognitive abilities of older workers decline with age, which can cause a mismatch between abilities and job demands, potentially leading to early retirement. We link longitudinal Health and Retirement Study data to O*NET occupational characteristics to estimate to what extent...

The simple one-good model of life-cycle consumption requires consumption smoothing.' However, British and U.S. households apparently reduce consumption at retirement and the reduction cannot be explained by the life-cycle model. An interpretation is that retirees are surprised by the inadequacy...