The Supplemental Security Income program (SSI) provides a guaranteed income for the elderly. As such it can serve to mitigate any deleterious effects of reductions in Social Security benefits that might result from any Social Security reform. However, participation in SSI among qualified...

We explore the effects of disability discrimination laws on hiring of older workers. A concern with antidiscrimination laws is that they may reduce hiring by raising the cost of terminations and – in the specific case of disability discrimination laws – raising the cost of employment because...

The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program provides federally-funded income support for individuals with disabilities, and has become one of the most important means-tested transfer programs in the United States. Previous studies have examined the effects of economic conditions on growth in...

This paper investigates whether exchanging the Social Security delayed retirement credit, currently paid as an increase in lifetime annuity benefits, for a lump sum would induce later claiming and additional work. We show that people would voluntarily claim about half a year later if the lump...

In this paper, we explore and compare how older and younger couple house- holds use adjustments in the wife’s labor supply to mitigate the e?ects of negative shocks to the husband’s employment status. Using di?erence-in-di?erences match- ing methods, we document a substantial added worker...

While increased life expectancy in the U.S. has been used as justification for raising the Social Security retirement ages, independent researchers have reported that life expectancy declined in recent decades for white women with less than a high school education. However, there has been a...

Understanding whether the elderly are saving adequately is fundamental to understanding whether elderly households are able to maintain reasonable living standards. One factor that affects wealth accumulation is the extent to which parents need to support children and the extent to which...

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...

This paper develops a framework to analyze the actuarial adjustments faced by American workers who claim Social Security benefits before or after their Full Retirement Age (FRA). We derive the conditions under which these adjustments are “actuarially fair” (or “neutral”) and develop...

This paper examines the distributional implications of introducing additional means testing of Social Security benefits where proceeds are used to help balance Social Security’s finances. Benefits of the top quarter of households ranked according to the relevant measure of means are reduced...