This study updates what we know about the Great Recession’s impact on older unemployed Americans’ health and pre-retirement life by focusing on their wealth and income sources, health insurance access, poverty rates, unemployment duration, labor force drop-out rates, and Social Security...

We estimate the relationship between the returns on housing, stocks, and bonds, and simulate a variety of decumulation strategies incorporating reverse mortgages. We show that homeowner’s reversionary interest, the amount that can be borrowed through a reverse mortgage, is a surprisingly risky...

How households draw down the balances that they accumulate in retirement saving accounts such as 401(k) plans and Individual Retirement Accounts can have an important effect on the contribution of these accounts to retirement income security. This paper presents evidence on the pattern of...

Past research on the topic of sustainable withdrawal rates has primarily focused on longer distribution periods which apply to younger age retirees.A structural problem with pensions, annuities, and first generation "safe withdrawal rate" is a disconnect of benefits paid (fixed or fixed with...

Previous retirement adequacy studies have ignored expected retirement income stages. Ignoring retirement income stages results in biased estimations of retirement adequacy. This study analyzes retirement income stage theoretically and then empirically. Based on the 1995 to 2007 Survey of...

This paper investigates the effects of increasing the eligibility age for public pension on workers' retirement decisions, focusing on recent Japanese public pension reforms. In Japan, the pensionable age for Employees' Pension Insurance benefits gradually increased from 60 to 65 for males over...

Facing a reduction in pension generosity, individuals can compensate the loss by working longer or saving more. This paper shows that the impact of changes in pension generosity on saving crucially depends on the possibility of prolonging future employment. Exploiting across cohort variation in...

We investigate the wealth decumulation decision from the perspective of a retiree who is averse to the prospect of fully annuitizing her accumulated savings. We field a large online survey of hypothetical product choices for phased drawdown offerings and annuities. While the demand for annuities...

We investigate the importance of alternative motives for choosing a saving and consumption trajectory after retirement. Using an online experimental survey, we elicit the impact on advised spending patterns and underlying saving motives of alternative retirement drawdown designs, comprising...

Population aging and the poor performance of financial markets during recent years put the sustainability of pension arrangements in many Western countries under pressure. In order to investigate whether the Dutch will be able to cope with possible cutbacks in the generosity of pensions, we...