Retirement Incentives and Couples' Retirement Decisions

The typical family in the US is now a dual-earner couple, yet relatively few studies examine the retirement decision in a household context. This paper explores how husbands' and wives' retirement behavior is influenced by their own financial incentives from Social Security and private pensions and by spillover effects' from their spouses' incentives. I find that men and women are similarly responsive to their own incentives. I further find that men are very responsive to their wives' incentives but that women are not responsive to their husbands' incentives and present evidence to suggest that this may be due to asymmetric complementarities of leisure. Policy simulations suggest that the omission of spillover effects will bias the estimated effect of changing Social Security policy on men's labor force participation.

Health Shocks and Couples' Labor Supply Decisions

Unexpected health events such as a heart attack or new cancer diagnosis are very common for workers in their 50s and 60s. These health shocks can result in a significant loss in family income if the worker reduces labor supply, but the family can also protect itself against this loss if the worker's spouse increases labor supply, generating an "added worker effect." In this paper, I examine the effect of health shocks on the labor supply of both spouses using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). I find that shocks lead the affected worker to reduce labor supply dramatically, particularly if the shock is accompanied by a loss of functioning. I also find that the added worker effect is small for men and that there is no such effect for women. There is some evidence to suggest that families respond to health shocks in predictable ways depending on characteristics such as access to retiree health insurance. The study concludes that health shocks result in real financial losses for families and are an important source of financial risk for older households.

How Household Portfolios Evolve After Retirement: The Effect of Aging and Health Shocks

In this paper, we study how the portfolios of elderly U.S. households evolve after retirement, using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). In particular, we investigate the influence of aging and health shocks on a household%u2019s ownership of various assets and on the dollar value and share of total assets held in each asset class. We find that households decrease their ownership of most asset classes as they age, with the strongest evidence for principal residences and vehicles, while increasing the share of assets held in bank accounts and CDs. Consistent with prior studies, we find that the death of a spouse is a strong predictor of selling the principal residence. However, we find that widowhood also leads households to sell vehicles, businesses, and real estate and to put money into bank accounts and CDs, and further that other health shocks have very similar impacts. Finally, we explore why health shocks affect asset holdings and find that the effect of a shock is greatly magnified when households have physical or mental impairments. This suggests that factors other than standard risk and return considerations may weigh heavily in many older households%u2019 portfolio decisions.

Social Security Incentives for Retirement

We present a detailed analysis of the incentives that Social Security provides for continued work at older ages. We do so using information on older males from the Health and Retirement Study over the 1980-1997 period to calculate the changes in the present discounted value of Social Security entitlements from additional work at each age. We find that the median male worker faces a small tax on work at ages 55-61, a near zero tax at ages 62-64, and a large tax at ages 65-69. However, there is significant heterogeneity in tax rates. We also document significant non-monotonicities in the accrual of Social Security entitlements with additional work, and suggest a more appropriate measure of incentive effects that considers accruals over not just the next year but future years as well.

Social Security and Retirement

A critical question for Social Security policy is how program incentives affect retirement behavior. We use the wealth of new data available through the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) to examine the impact of Social Security incentives on male retirement. We implement forward-looking models of retirement whereby individuals consider not just the incentives to work in the next year but in all future years as well. We find that such forward looking incentive measures for Social Security are significant determinants of retirement decisions. Our findings suggest that Social Security policies which increase the incentives to work at older ages can significantly reduce the exit rate of older workers from the labor force.

Labor Market Shocks and Retirement: Do Government Programs Matter?

This paper examines how unemployment affects retirement and whether the Unemployment Insurance (UI) system and Social Security (SS) system affect how older workers respond to labor market shocks. To do so, we use pooled cross-sectional data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS) as well as March CPS files matched between one year and the next and longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS). We find that downturns in the labor market increase retirement transitions. The magnitude of this effect is comparable to that associated with moderate changes in financial incentives to retire and to the threat of a health shock to which older workers are exposed. Interestingly, retirements only increase in response to an economic downturn once workers become SS-eligible, suggesting that retirement benefits may help alleviate the income loss associated with a weak labor market. We also estimate the impact of UI generosity on retirement and find little consistent evidence of an effect. This suggests that in some ways SS may serve as a more effective form of unemployment insurance for older workers than UI.