Retirement Saving and Decumulation in a Persistent Low-Return Environment

Recent economic conditions have vastly changed the retirement landscape as a lengthy period of low interest rates have made building wealth for retirement harder and the risk of depleting wealth during the decumulation phase of retirement greater than at any time in recent history. The retirement environment presents challenges, over (i) the period for which interest rate remain low, and (ii) once interest rates appreciably increase--as fixed income assets then decrease in value. This paper addresses two related topics: first, how have households responded to the current low interest rate environment and second, are there alternative responses or investments which households might do well to consider? Beginning with the first topic: we employ the HRS to first investigate impacts of the 2008 – 2014 low interest rate impacts on savings, wealth and asset allocation both ahead of and while in retirement. As well as employing a full sample we report on the responses of the subset of households who have been relatively successful at building and preserving wealth over this period. Following this analytic work we consider alternative portfolio and wealth management strategies targeting increases in equities and delayed participation in Social Security in terms of their potential to add value in persistent low return environments

Retirement Behavior and the Global Financial Crisis

Recent economic conditions have vastly changed the retirement landscape. Declines in assets as well as high unemployment changed the retirement plans of many Americans. Shocks to employment and wealth have likely influenced retirement behavior. This chapter provides a survey of the current literature on the influence of employment and wealth shocks on retirement and then makes use of administrative records on benefit applications to provide a preliminary analysis of changes in early retirement (age 62) claiming resulting from the recent economic downturn and implications. Since early claiming can have long lasting implications for retirement well being, we address how Americans learn about their retirement options

Unified Structural Representation of the southern California crust and upper mantle

We present a new, 3D description of crust and upper mantle velocity structure in southern California implemented as a Unified Structural Representation (USR). The USR is comprised of detailed basin velocity descriptions that are based on tens of thousands of direct velocity (Vp, Vs) measurements and incorporates the locations and displacement of major fault zones that influence basin structure. These basin descriptions were used to developed tomographic models of crust and upper mantle velocity and density structure, which were subsequently iterated and improved using 3D waveform adjoint tomography. A geotechnical layer (GTL) based on Vs30 measurements and consistent with the underlying velocity descriptions was also developed as an optional model component. The resulting model provides a detailed description of the structure of the southern California crust and upper mantle that reflects the complex tectonic history of the region. The crust thickens eastward as Moho depth varies from 10 to 40 km reflecting the transition from oceanic to continental crust. Deep sedimentary basins and underlying areas of thin crust reflect Neogene extensional tectonics overprinted by transpressional deformation and rapid sediment deposition since the late Pliocene. To illustrate the impact of this complex structure on strong ground motion forecasting, we simulate rupture of a proposed M 7.9 earthquake source in the Western Transverse Ranges. The results show distinct basin amplification and focusing of energy that reflects crustal structure described by the USR that is not captured by simpler velocity descriptions. We anticipate that the USR will be useful for a broad range of simulation and modeling efforts, including strong ground motion forecasting, dynamic rupture simulations, and fault system modeling. The USR is available through the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) website (http://www.scec.org)