With the decline of defined benefit (DB) pension plans, there has been some renewed interest in providing other annuity income options to American workers, but demand for annuities has remained low in the United States. To develop future annuity income solutions, it is important to understand...

This paper examines in detail the differences in out-of-pocket health care spending between couple and single older households. The data for this paper come from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a study of a nationally representative sample of U.S. households with individuals over age 50....

This paper presents evidence suggesting that a large part of the older population may be making involuntary spending adjustments. The data used for this analysis come from the 2009 Internet Survey of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the most comprehensive national survey of older...

This paper reports on a study of how spending in older American households (ages 50 and above) varies across different census regions and divisions. The study shows large variations in household spending across the country, suggesting that both individual households and financial firms might...

This paper shows how household spending changed in the immediate years following retirement by analyzing the spending patterns of a fixed group of households up to six years after their retirement. Two sources of data are used for this study. First is the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), which...

A worker's disposition of his or her defined contribution (DC) retirement account balances at the point of separation from a previous employer is one of the most important decisions a DC plan participant faces. Although this decision has important implications for the retirement security of...

This paper reports the frequency and extent of intra-family cash transfers: both transfers from older households to their children and grandchildren, and vice versa. It also shows how these transfers are correlated with income levels and compares the asset and income levels of households that...

This paper takes a comprehensive look at the financial situation of older Americans at the end of their lives. In particular, it documents the percentage of households with a member who recently died with few or no assets. It also documents the income, debt, home-ownership rates, net home...