The labor supply and benefit claiming incentives provided by the early retirement rules of the Social Security Old Age benefits program are of growing importance as the Normal Retirement Age (NRA) increases to 67, the labor force participation of Older Americans rises, and a variety of reforms...

An increasing number of longitudinal data sets collect expectations information regarding a variety of future individual level events and decisions, providing researchers with the opportunity to explore expectations over micro variables in detail. We present a theoretical framework and an...

We build upon the growing literature on financial literacy, which studies the prevalence of lack of knowledge about various financial issues, and analyze how much people know about the Social Security rules using a small pilot survey conducted in 2007, and a follow-up and extended survey funded...

The need for Social Security Reform in the next years is hardly a matter of debate. Therefore, the widespread believe among Americans that Social Security will not be able to pay benefits in the long run at the level that was anticipated, does not come as a surprise. The government acknowledges...

This paper tests the Rational Expectations (RE) hypothesis regarding retirement expectations of married older American couples, controlling for sample selection and reporting biases. In prior research we found that individual retirement expectation formation was consistent with the Rational...

The changes to the Social Security Old Age benefits system introduced in the last decade, which will continue later this decade, have impacted individuals' labor supply and retirement decisions, and therefore their health insurance coverage. This paper provides an empirical analysis of the...

We investigate how the shift in private pension coverage from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) retirement plans since the 1980s has contributed to the substantial rise in labor force participation of older Americans. We develop a life cycle model of retirement that captures...

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...