This paper assesses the effects of personality traits on economic preparation for retirement, wealth accumulation, and consumption, among persons 66 to 69 years of age. Among the five chief personality traits of neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness, we focus...

Shocks to income and wealth decrease the household's monetary budget available. As a consequence, households respond by decreasing consumption spending. Income shocks, such as unexpected unemployment and retirement, also increase the time-budget available in addition to decreasing the monetary...

I estimate the fraction of widows that will be in poverty by projecting the economic status, as measured in 1979, of a cohort of the elderly. The projections are based on an economic model of consumption behavior. I define and estimate a consumption-based measure of poverty status that, I...

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....

Health, wealth and where one lives are important, if not the three most important material living conditions. There are many mechanisms that suggest that living arrangements and well-being derived from health and economic status are closely related. This paper investigates the joint evolution of...

According to the life-cycle model, mortality risk will influence both retirement and the desire to annuitize wealth. We estimate the effect of subjective survival probabilities on retirement and on the claiming of Social Security benefits because delayed claiming is equivalent to the purchase of...

In the Health and Retirement Survey respondents were asked about the chances they would live to 75 or to 85, and the chances they would work after age 62 or 65. We analyze the responses to determine if they behave like probabilities, if their averages are close to average probabilities in the...

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...