Gain and Loss: Marriage and Wealth Changes Over Time

Family composition has changed dramatically over the past 25 years. Divorce rates increased and remarriage rates declined. While considerable research established a link between marriage and earnings, far less is empirically understood about the effect of marriage on wealth although wealth is an important measure for older individuals because it represents resources available for consumption in retirement. In this paper we employ eight waves of panel data from the Health and Retirement Study to study the relationship between wealth changes and marital status among individuals over age 50. This research advances understanding of the relationship by first, incorporating measures of current and lifetime earnings, mortality risk and other characteristics that vary by marital status into models of wealth change; second, measuring the magnitude of wealth loss and gain associated with divorce, widowing and remarriage and third, estimating wealth change before and after marital status change so the change in wealth change is not the result of individuals entering or leaving the household and other sources of unobserved differences are removed from estimates of the effect of marriage on wealth. Our results suggest no differences in wealth change over time among individuals that remain married, divorced, widowed, never married and partnered over 7 years. In the short-run there are substantial wealth changes associated with marital status changes. Divorce at older ages is costly, remarriage is wealth enhancing and people appear to change their savings in response to changes in marital status.

The Effects of Subjective Survival on Retirement and Social Security Claiming

This research examines the relationship between mortality risk and retirement, and mortality risk and the propensity to take early and reduced Social Security benefits. The main theory for understanding saving behavior is the life-cycle model (LCH). The LCH, however, can be extended to find the optimal retirement age, and can be used to make predictions about the desire to annuitize or equivalently, the desire to delay claiming Social Security benefits. According to the LCH, individuals who expect to be exceptionally long-lived will retire at a later age than individuals who expect to die early because they will need greater wealth to finance more years of retirement. According to almost any model of intertemporal maximization, those who expect to be long lived will see the increase in Social Security benefits that result from retiring at 65 rather than at 62 as being financially advantageous and will, therefore, delay application for benefits until the age of 65. In principle the decision to retire and the decision to take early and reduced benefits are related decisions but not necessarily the same decision. Therefore this study examines both decisions.

The Effects of Subjective Survival on Retirement and Social Security Claiming

According to the life-cycle model, mortality risk will influence both retirement and the desire to annuitize wealth. We estimate the effect of subjective survival probabilities on retirement and on the claiming of Social Security benefits because delayed claiming is equivalent to the purchase of additional Social Security annuities. We find that those with very low subjective probabilities of survival retire earlier and claim earlier than those with higher subjective probabilities, but the effects are not large. The great majority of workers claim as soon as they are eligible.

Gain and Loss: Marriage and Wealth Changes Over Time

Family composition has changed dramatically over the past 25 years. Divorce rates increased and remarriage rates declined. While considerable research established a link between marriage and earnings, far less is empirically understood about the effect of marriage on wealth although wealth is an important measure for older individuals because it represents resources available for consumption in retirement. In this paper we employ eight waves of panel data from the Health and Retirement Study to study the relationship between wealth changes and marital status among individuals over age 50. This research advances understanding of the relationship by first, incorporating measures of current and lifetime earnings, mortality risk and other characteristics that vary by marital status into models of wealth change; second, measuring the magnitude of wealth loss and gain associated with divorce, widowing and remarriage and third, estimating wealth change before and after marital status change so the change in wealth change is not the result of individuals entering or leaving the household and other sources of unobserved differences are removed from estimates of the effect of marriage on wealth. Our results suggest no differences in wealth change over time among individuals that remain married, divorced, widowed, never married and partnered over 7 years. In the short-run there are substantial wealth changes associated with marital status changes. Divorce at older ages is costly, remarriage is wealth enhancing and people appear to change their savings in response to changes in marital status.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64466/1/wp213.pd

Labor Market and Immigration Behavior of Middle-Aged and Elderly Mexicans

In this study we analyzed the retirement behavior of Mexicans with migration spells to the United States that returned to Mexico and non-migrants. Our analysis is based on rich panel data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS). Approximately 9 percent of MHAS respondents aged 50 and older reported having lived or worked in the United States. These return migrants were more likely to be working at older ages than non-migrants. Consistent with much of the prior research on retirement in the United States and other developed countries, Mexican non-migrants and return migrants were responsive to institutional incentives. Both groups were more likely to retire if they had publicly provided health insurance and pensions. In addition, receipt of U.S. Social Security benefits increased retirement rates among return migrants. Return migrants were more likely to report being in poor health and this also increased the likelihood of retiring. The 2004 draft of an Agreement on Social Security would coordinate benefits across United States and Mexico boundaries to protect the benefits of persons who have worked in foreign countries. The agreement would likely increase the number of authorized and unauthorized Mexican workers and family member eligible for Social Security benefits. The responsiveness of current, older Mexican return migrants to pension benefits, suggests that an Agreement would affect the retirement behavior of Mexican migrants.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61816/1/wp192.pd

The Future of Intergenerational Relations in Aging Societies

As the pressure mounts to reduce the public costs of supporting rapidly aging societies, responsibility for supporting elderly people will increasingly fall on their family members. This essay explores the family’s capacity to respond to these growing challenges. In particular, we examine how family change and growing inequality pose special problems in developed nations, especially the United States. This essay mentions a series of studies supported by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on an Aging Society that aim to examine the future of intergenerational exchange. We focus particularly on adults who have dependent and young-adult children and who must also care for elderly parents, a fraction of the population that will grow substantially in the coming twenty-five years

The Effect of Retirement Incentives on Retirement Behavior: Evidence from the Self-Employed in the United States and England

In this paper, we examine how public and private pension and health insurance systems affect the retirement transitions. In many countries, public and private pension eligibility, as well as access to health insurance varies between self-employed and wage and salary workers, and these differences are likely to cause differential retirement patterns both within and across countries. We use the variation in these institutional features within and across the United States and England to analyze retirement patterns. Based on longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) in the United States and the English Longitudinal Survey of Ageing (ELSA) we find that the higher labor force exit rate of wage and salary workers compared to self-employed workers is due to defined benefit pension incentives created by the public and private pension systems. Higher rates of labor force exit at ages 55 and older in England compared to the United States are due in part to the availability of publicly provided health insurance.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57567/1/wp155.pd

Marital Histories and Economic Well-Being

Compared to unmarried individuals married individuals report greater average wealth. A restricted focus on current marital status risks misrepresenting the effects of marriage on wealth, as an increasing proportion of older adults have been divorced and remarried, having lived through the dramatic upheavals in family structure from the 1960s through the 1980s. To shed light on the associations between a lifetime of marriage events and wealth near retirement, we used panel data from the Health and Retirement Study and developed categories of marital experiences that acknowledged current status, type, number and date of past marital disruptions and total duration of time spent married across the lifespan. We found that the route individuals took to get to their current marital status were important predictors of wealth levels near retirement and were different for males and females. Observable differences in lifetime earnings, mortality risk, risk aversion, other characteristics such as education and number of children, explained much of the wealth difference between married and remarried individuals however neither observable characteristics nor sources of other wealth from pensions and Social Security were enough to explain the large differences in wealth accumulation between single and married women and individuals experiencing more than one marital disruption. Given the higher divorce rate, prevalence of multiple divorces and earlier age of divorce of the Baby Boomer cohort compared to earlier cohorts, an understanding of how marriage disruptions over the lifecycle impact savings is increasingly important for understanding the economic security of retirees.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61806/1/wp180.pd