While dramatic increases in women’s labor supply and earnings have led to a substantial decline in the fraction of women eligible for spouse benefits at retirement, most wives still receive a survivor benefit, as wives still typically have lower earnings than their husbands and live longer....

This study uses restricted-access employer-level microdata from the National Compensation Survey to examine the relationship between automatic enrollment and employee compensation. By boosting plan participation, automatic enrollment has the potential to increase employer defined contribution...

This study uses the Health and Retirement Study to deepen our understanding of the characteristics of nonworking adults ages 51 to 61 and how they support themselves before qualifying for Social Security benefits. The results show that nonworking adults ages 51 to 61 are a heterogeneous group. A...

Many workers eligible for 401(k) plans fail to par­ticipate and those who do participate often save too little. In response, policy experts have advocated auto-enrollment, in which employees are signed up at a default contribution rate unless they opt out. Over the past decade, a number of...

Using the Dynamic Simulation of Income Model, we project how Social Security benefits and payroll taxes would change were Congress to enact the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform's proposal. We show benefits at several points in time and relative to pre-retirement income, a...

An increasing number of Americans are entering old age with outstanding debt, forcing many retirees to devote some income to servicing their debt and leaving them with less to cover daily living expenses. Using Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data, this brief reports that the share of adults...