Financial literacy is higher for men than for women and high financial literacy has been linked to higher wealth and better retirement planning. However, relatively little is known about the decision making process for retirement savings within couples and about how the gap or interaction...

The economic and financial landscape facing individuals as they move through their life-cycle is becoming increasing complex. Internationally, declines in the coverage and generosity of public programmes mean that individuals now need to assume responsibility for a greater share of their future...

This chapter defines a universal public pension scheme (UPPS) as a government-mandated lifecycle longevity insurance scheme that transfers individual consumption from the working years to the retirement phase of the lifecycle. It discusses the differences in four UPPS designs defined with regard...

This paper demonstrates that the link between heterogeneity in longevity and lifetime income across countries is mostly high and often increasing; that it translates into an implicit tax/subsidy, with rates reaching 20 percent and higher in some countries; that such rates risk perverting...

Retirement policies are individually designed but the majority of people of retirement age live as couples. We estimate the effects of a French pension reform on spouses' employment decisions. We use labor-force survey data, pooled over different years, on fifty thousand French couples and apply...

Posner (1995) proposes the redistribution of health spending from old women to old men to equalize life expectancy. His argument is based on the assumption that women's utility is higher if they are married. Thus, extending the lifespan of men would benefit women. Using life satisfaction data...

Using data from a stated preferences experiment in the Netherlands, we find that replacing full-time pension schemes with schemes that offer gradual retirement opportunities induce workers to retire one year later on average. Total life-time labour supply, however, decreases with 3.4 months...

China launched a new rural pension scheme (hereafter NRPS) for rural residents in 2009, now covering almost all counties with over 400 million people enrolled. This implementation of the largest social pension program in the world offers a unique setting for studying the economics of...

As is the case in most developed countries, the population of New Zealand is ageing numerically and structurally. Population ageing can have important effects on the distribution of personal income within and between urban areas. The age structure of the population may affect the distribution of...

We study the effect of state medical marijuana laws on labor supply among older adults; the demographic group with the highest rates of many health conditions for which marijuana may be an effective treatment. We use the Health and Retirement Study to study this question and estimate...