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...

The general perception is that the Social Security program expanded significantly in the 1970s and today benefits are much higher relative to pre-retirement earnings than they were prior to that expansion. Indeed, the Social Security Trustees Report shows that the replacement rate benefits as a...

Medicare Part D was established to expand outpatient prescription drug coverage to all seniors. An obvious effect of Part D was to improve the well-being of those who gained coverage by reducing their exposure to drug costs. But, the law also boosted demand for drugs used by those ages 65 and...

One of Social Security’s objectives is to ensure that vulnerable groups have adequate income in retirement. Historically, widows have been of particular concern for policymakers due to their high rates of poverty. However, over the past several decades, their poverty rate has fallen...

Social Security's Trust Fund is projected to be exhausted in 2034. A variety of changes to the program have been put forward that would either push this date out into the future or delay it indefinitely. Some of these changes would cut benefits – e.g., increasing the Full Retirement Age (FRA)...

Many state and local governments have responded to challenges facing their pension plans by cutting benefits. Will these cuts make it harder for state and local governments to recruit and retain high-quality workers? To date, the answer has been difficult to obtain; most micro-level datasets...

Disabled veterans are less likely to work today than in the past; between 1995 and 2014, the percent of veterans who were working while receiving disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) dropped from 62 percent to 49 percent. This drop has led the VA – which...

This paper explores the extent to which health, employment, family, or finances are associated with earlier-than-planned retirement using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). The importance of any shock that drives early retirement depends both on its effect on those experiencing it and its...

Recent research by Bee and Mitchell (2017) has refocused attention on the fact that the Current Population Survey (CPS) underestimates retirement income. In the wake of this study, some observers have questioned whether other surveys more frequently used by retirement researchers also understate...