As the baby boomers begin to retire, a great deal remains unknown about the evolution of wealth toward the end of life. In this paper, we develop a new measure of household resources that converts total financial, nonfinancial, and annuitized assets into an expected annual amount of wealth per...

Dramatic structural changes in the U.S. pension system, along with the impending wave of retiring baby boomers, have given rise to a broad policy discussion of the adequacy of household retirement wealth. We construct a uniquely comprehensive measure of wealth for households aged 51 and older in...

Even though they have only existed since 1981, some analysts have concluded that 401(k) plans are a failure. For example, some argue that 401(k) plans are “coming up short” due to, among other factors, the low contribution rates of participants. A recent government report concluded that...

This paper uses data that combine retirement distributions reported by taxpayers on tax returns with information reported by the payers of those distributions on information returns. With the combined data we can allocate distributions reported on Form 1040 by the detailed distribution codes...

To maintain their standard of living in retirement, it is often assumed that individuals need to save enough to replace 75 percent to 80 percent of their final pay. This paper develops a replacement rate measure that better corresponds to a replacement of consumption by properly accounting for...

Using panel data from the Internal Revenue Service's Statistics of Income (SOI) Division, we find that most individuals do not experience a reduction in inflation-adjusted spendable income after claiming Social Security. We also examine the composition of income after claiming and find that both...