The policy option of extending mandatory Social Security coverage to newly hired uncovered state and local workers is often included in packages to eliminate the program’s financing shortfall. The arguments for mandatory coverage go beyond financial considerations, though, as extending...

While life insurance purchase decisions have long been studied, we still do not know how people decide if they need insurance or how much they need. Using in-depth interviews, we peer into the black box of employee decision-making to learn what people know about this employee-benefit, and how...

In light of the declining pension coverage of low-income workers, policy makers have discussed requiring all employers to offer individual retirement accounts, similar to defined contribution plans. How likely to participate are workers who currently do not have access to a pension plan? We...

Why do some men father children outside of marriage but not provide support? Why are single women willing to have children outside of marriage when they receive little or no support from unmarried fathers? To answer these questions, we develop and estimate a dynamic equilibrium model of...

Commentators constantly cite an increase in labor mobility as a major reason for the shift in the private sector from defined benefit to defined contribution plans. But while most casual observers accept such a phenomenon, economists have been hard pressed to find any significant change over...

Employer-sponsored pensions are an important source of retirement income and often make the difference between having a comfortable retirement and just scraping by. Over the past two decades, pension sponsorship and participation have remained relatively constant. At any given point in time,...

Even before the sharp financial downturn, working longer had emerged as perhaps the most attractive response to the contraction of the nation’s retirement income system.1 Since the downturn, working longer increasingly seems to be the only way most work­ers approaching retirement can secure a...

The Obama Administration has proposed "Autho-IRAs" to boost pension coverage among those not currently offered a plan. Such a policy is seen to offer great potential, given that 60% of low-income workers currently offered a 401(k) choose to participate. However, these low-income workers with...