Working longer is often hailed as the best way to increase retirement incomes, yet this strategy depends crucially on seniors' ability to find work and hold on to their jobs. This study examines how the incidence and consequences of job displacement vary by age. Data come primarily from the...

This study uses DYNASIM3, the Urban Institute’s dynamic microsimulation model, to examine the long-run effects of the Great Recession on the future retirement incomes of working-age individuals in 2008. It compares a baseline scenario that incorporates the historic and projected effects of...

Both unemployment insurance (UI) extensions and the availability of disability benefits have disincentive effects on job search. But UI extensions can reduce the efficiency cost of disability benefits if UI recipients delay disability application until they exhaust their unemployment benefits....

The possibility of increasing the age at which Social Security benefits are first paid merits renewed scrutiny for at least three reasons: 1) a decrease in overall benefits would imply that those claiming reduced benefits before the ‘full benefits age' may accept benefits that seem adequate...

The goal of this paper is to carefully document the characteristics of within-family monetary transfers in the United States, using all nine waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Using the HRS, we construct a novel child-level longitudinal dataset and augment it with detailed...

Using data on older individuals and couples, we estimate a collective model of household consumption of a variety of goods, showing how resources are shared between husbands and wives, and how this allocation is affected by retirement and health status. We identify the extent to which shared...

Due to a changing retirement landscape, many baby boomers are likely to have insufficient resources for a secure retirement. One potential source that could improve their situation is inheritances. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances and the Health and Retirement Study, this study...

Immigration is transforming the U.S. labor force with important consequences for Social Security’s adequacy and finances. Using longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation matched to rich administrative data on lifetime earnings and benefit receipt, we measure the...

The goal of this paper is to carefully document the characteristics of within-family monetary transfers in the United States, using all nine waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Using the HRS, we construct a novel child-level longitudinal dataset and augment it with detailed...

Past research has shown that income from the Social Security program has contributed to trends towards smaller households, greater residential independence - the tendency to live alone rather than with others - and a greater prevalence of home ownership late in life. However, the mechanism...