In the United States, because access to health insurance is tied to employment, the availability of retiree health insurance interacts with post-retirement income to shape the retirement decision. This paper uses administrative data from the California Department of Education to estimate the...

Immigrants residing among many people who share their ethnic background are especially likely to receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for a disability when they belong to high SSI take-up immigrant groups. After showing that this relationship cannot be fully explained by differences in...

This paper investigates the effects of economic incentives on divorce and remarriage behavior. Before December 1977, the Social Security law entitled divorcees to claim auxiliary benefits on their ex-spouse’s record only if the marriage lasted at least 20 years. One of the 1977 amendments of...

The “retirement saving puzzle” is a phenomenon in which many households U.S. households have significant wealth late in life, contrary to the predictions of a simple life-cycle model. In this project, we examine cross-country differences in the saving behavior of retirees in order to weigh...

This analysis uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine the sources of variation in mortality for individuals of varying socioeconomic status. The use of the HRS allows a distinction between education and a measure of career earnings as primary determinants of socioeconomic...

We build a general equilibrium model with endogenous saving, labor force participation, work hours and Social Security benefit claiming, in which overlapping generations of individuals face income, survival, and health expenditure risks in incomplete markets. We use the model to study the impact...

This paper uses the first six waves of the Health and Retirement Study to investigate the impact of pensions on expected retirement age, on the probability of being retired in each wave given employment in the previous wave, and on the probability of retiring earlier than planned. Pension...

Understanding the consumption needs of retirees is critical to assessing the adequacy of retirement income and the possible impact of Social Security reform on the well-being of older Americans. This study uses data from the Health and Retirement Study, including a recent supplemental...

The rising cost of U.S. health care has reduced the share of compensation that is taxable by Social Security. Between 1960 and 2010, non-taxable employer premiums for worker health plans increased from 1 percent of employee compensation to 7 percent. We use international data to examine the...

Each year the Board of Trustees of the Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Trust Funds projects the future financial status of the programs extending as far as 75-years into the future. These projections incorporate anticipated trends in both demographic and economic determinants...