In recent years, Ireland has experienced a notable decline in homeownership and a rise in the proportion of households in private rental accommodation. Concurrently, the cost of both rents and house prices have risen markedly and affordability challenges in terms of meeting housing costs have...

Are early retiree health benefits (RHBs) a form of deferred compensation that binds workers to an employer? Most employers who offer RHBs offer them only to workers who have 10 or more years of tenure with the firm and have reached age 55. Accordingly, workers in firms offering RHBs have an...

We use exogenous variation in Social Security payments created by the Social Security benefits notch to estimate how retirees' use of prescription medications responds to changes in their incomes. In contrast to estimates obtained using ordinary least squares, instrumental variables estimates...

This study explores the factors that affect an individual's happiness while transitioning into retirement. Recent studies find that workers often view the idea of gradual retirement as a more attractive alternative than a "cold turkey" or abrupt retirement. However, there is very little evidence...

This paper documents the trends in the life-cycle profiles of net worth and housing equity between 1983 and 2004. The net worth of older households significantly increased during the housing boom of recent years. However, net worth grew by more than housing equity, in part because other assets...

Voluntary annuity markets are, in most countries, smaller than what the theoretical and part of the empirical literature would suggest. There are both demand and supply constraints that hamper the development of annuity markets. In particular, traditional products available in most countries can...

Simple presentations of the life cycle model often suggest a constant level of real consumption in retirement. Similarly, financial planners commonly suggest that people save for retirement in such a way as to enable them to maintain a level retirement standard of living equal to their standard...

We show how the economic incentives to remain in the labor force induced by Sweden's public old-age pension system and disability insurance program have changed between 1980 and 2015. Based on earnings histories for different hypothetical individuals corresponding to groups by gender and...

Economists have long been puzzled by the low demand for life annuities. To shed new light on this puzzle, we study payout choices in the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System, where each retiree must choose between a lump sum and a life annuity. Notably, the average life annuity we study is...