While life insurance purchase decisions have long been studied, we still do not know how people decide if they need insurance or how much they need. Using in-depth interviews, we peer into the black box of employee decision-making to learn what people know about this employee-benefit, and how...

The group benefits landscape is changing dramatically. The menu of available options has grown; employers are paying for fewer benefits; and the responsibility for selecting the benefit package has been increasingly left to the employee. However, unlike in the pension world, very little is known...

Research on informal and formal long-term care has centered almost solely on costs; to date, there has been very little attention paid to the benefits. This study exploits the randomization in the Cash and Counseling Demonstration and Evaluation program and instrumental variable techniques to...

With the leading edge of the baby boom generation reaching retirement age, decision makers need a comprehensive understanding of their social, economic, and health characteristics – both in terms of resources and needs – in order to adopt effective public policies and private services to...

With the leading edge of the Baby Boom generation reaching traditional retirement ages, decision makers need a comprehensive understanding of the boomers' social, economic, and health characteristics – both in terms of resources and needs – in order to adopt effective public policies and...

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we compare actual inheritances received during the period 1994 to 2004 with the amounts that, in 1994, households anticipated receiving within 10 years. We find little evidence of systematic forecasting errors. The factors affecting inheritance...

With the leading edge of the baby boom generation reaching retirement age, decision makers need a comprehensive understanding of their social, economic, and health characteristics – both in terms of resources and needs – in order to adopt effective public policies and private services to...

There is relatively little known about the geographic mobility of the elderly in general. Despite the stereotype of retiring in Florida, recent work has documented very little home equity changes among the elderly (Venti and Wise 2002, 2004; Anderson, French, and Lam 2004; Fisher et al. 2007), and that...

The wait time for a Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) award varies from a few months to several years. Little is known about how applicants fund their consumption during this period. Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) linked to the Social Security...