Eligibility for Social Security Disability Insurance

In order to understand whom among the non-disabled older population experiences a health problem later in life and applies for Social Security Disability Insurance, it is necessary to investigate patterns of coverage and reasons for non-coverage. This paper shows that while the safety net program covers most American workers, a substantial group of older women is not covered. In this sense, the program is not helpful to workers reaching their late 50’s and early 60’s with health-related problems.

Social Security Replacement Rates for Alternative Earnings Benchmarks

Social Security reform proposals are often presented in terms of their differential impacts on hypothetical or ‘example’ workers. Our work explores how different benchmarks produce different replacement rate outcomes. We use the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to evaluate how Social Security benefit replacement rates differ for actual versus hypothetical earner profiles, and we examine whether these findings are sensitive to alternative definitions of replacement rates. We find that workers with the median HRS profile would be estimated to receive benefits worth 55% of lifetime average earnings, versus 48% for the SSA medium scaled profile. Since US policymakers tend to prefer a replacement rate measure tied to workers’ own past earnings, using these metrics would yield higher replacement rates compared to commonly used scaled illustrative profiles. However, benchmarks that use population as opposed to individual earnings measures to compare individual worker benefits to pre-retirement consumption produce lower replacement rates for HRS versus hypothetical earners.

Retirement Responses to Early Social Security Benefit Reductions

This paper evaluates potential responses to reductions in early Social Security retirement benefits. Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) linked to administrative records, we find that Social Security coverage is quite uneven in the older population: one-quarter of respondents in their late 50's lacks coverage under the Disability Insurance program, and one-fifth lacks coverage for old-age benefits. Among those eligible for benefits, respondents who subsequently retired early appear quite similar initially to those who later filed for normal retirement benefits, but both groups were healthier and better educated than those who later filed for disability benefits. Next we investigate the potential impact of curtailing, and then eliminating, early Social Security benefits. A life-cycle model of retirement behavior provides estimated parameters used to simulate the effects of cutting early Social Security benefits on retirement pathways. We find that cutting early Social Security benefits would boost the probability of normal retirement by twice as much as it would the probability of disability retirement.

Saving Shortfalls and Delayed Retirement

Prior research has suggested that many older Americans have not saved enough to maintain consumption levels in old age. One way older persons might respond to inadequate savings would be to extend their worklives by delaying retirement. This paper examines evidence on this matter using the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative panel survey of people age 51-61 in 1992 followed for several years in a panel. We use the data to project household retirement assets and to determine how much more saving would be needed to preserve post-retirement consumption levels. Our research then examines the links between derived saving shortfall measures and delayed retirement patterns. Among nonmarried persons, there is evidence that larger shortfalls do produce delayed retirement, though the effect is not quantitatively large. For married couples, pre-retirement wealth shortfalls do not appear to be significantly associated with delayed retirement. Evidently couples have other means of handling saving shortfalls.

Social Security Replacement Rates For Alternative Earnings Benchmarks

Social Security reform proposals are often presented in terms of their differential impacts on hypothetical or ‘example’ workers. Our work explores how different benchmarks produce different replacement rate outcomes. We use the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to evaluate how Social Security benefit replacement rates differ for actual versus hypothetical earner profiles, and we examine whether these findings are sensitive to alternative definitions of replacement rates. We find that workers with the median HRS profile would be estimated to receive benefits worth 55% of lifetime average earnings, versus 48% for the SSA medium scaled profile. Since US policymakers tend to prefer a replacement rate measure tied to workers’ own past earnings, using these metrics would yield higher replacement rates compared to commonlyused scaled illustrative profiles. However, benchmarks that use population as opposed to individual earnings measures to compare individual worker benefits to pre-retirement consumption produce lower replacement rates for HRS versus hypothetical earners

Retirement Responses to Early Social Security Benefit Reductions

This paper evaluates potential responses to reductions in early Social Security retirement benefits. Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) linked to administrative records, we find that Social Security coverage is quite uneven in the older population: one-quarter of respondents in their late 50’s lacks coverage under the Disability Insurance program, and one-fifth lacks coverage for old-age benefits. Among those eligible for benefits, respondents who subsequently retired early appear quite similar initially to those who later filed for normal retirement benefits, but both groups were healthier and better educated than those who later filed for disability benefits. Next we investigate the potential impact of curtailing, and then eliminating, early Social Security benefits. A life-cycle model of retirement behavior provides estimated parameters used to simulate the effects of cutting early Social Security benefits on retirement pathways. We find that cutting early Social Security benefits would boost the probability of normal retirement by twice as much as it would the probability of disability retirement

Retirement Wealth and Lifetime Earnings Variability

This paper explores understand how earnings variability influences peoples’ retirement preparedness by influencing their accumulated wealth levels as of retirement age. Prior research has demonstrated that the US average household nearing retirement would need to save substantially more in order to preserve consumption in old age. While some socioeconomic factors have been suggested that might explain shortfalls, previous studies have not assessed the role of earnings variability over the lifetime as a potential explanation for poor retirement prospects. Thus two workers having identical levels of average lifetime earnings might have had very different patterns of earnings variability over their lifetimes. Such differences could translate into quite different retirement wealth outcomes. We evaluate the effect of earnings variability on retirement wealth using information supplied by respondents to the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). This is a rich and nationally representative dataset on Americans on the verge of retirement, with responses linked to administrative records from the Social Security Administration. Our research illuminates key links between lifetime earnings variability and retirement wealth

Retirement in Japan and the United States: Cross-national Comparisons using the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR) and the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (HRS)

Working Paper: WP 2012-270Cross-national comparisons of data from developed countries offer useful insights into the retirement process and policy. Here we summarize findings for older persons age 50-70 using new microdata files collected by the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR) project, and we compare these with results in the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We examine the relative importance of health, wealth, family, and other factors in work and retirement at older ages cross-nationally. Though both countries have relatively high employment at older ages, the Japanese have longer life expectancy, higher levels of financial wealth, and a lower public pension eligibility age. Our analysis, the first to compare these two rich data sources, suggests two conclusions (subject to revision when data weights become available). First, older Americans differ in key ways from their Japanese counterparts, particularly along educational, health, and wealth dimensions. Second, in some cases, there is a distinctly different impact of these factors on labor force outcomes. Specifically, age, sex, education, and wealth influence behavior differently across the two countries, though being obese or having better mental acuity/financial literacy scores has no differential impact. Thus observed differences in work patterns between Americans and Japanese at older ages are attributable to some identifiable factors; moreover, the results can be used to project future responses to changes in education, age, health, and wealth in order to account for the large differences in older workers’ work patterns at older ages in Japan and the US.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/98096/1/wp270.pd

Long-term stability of adolescent versus adult surgery for treatment of mandibular deficiency

In mandibular deficient patients, mandibular growth is not expected after the adolescent growth spurt, so mandibular advancement surgery is often carried out at 13 years. To test if the long-term stability for younger patients is similar to that for adult patients, the authors compared cephalometric changes from 1 year postsurgery (when changes due to the surgery should be completed) to 5 year follow up. 32 patients who had early mandibular advancement with or without simultaneous maxillary surgery (aged up to 16 for girls and 18 for boys), and 52 patients with similar surgery at older ages were studied. Beyond 1 year postsurgery, the younger patients showed significantly greater change in the horizontal and vertical position of points B and pogonion, the horizontal (but not vertical) position of gonion, and mandibular plane angle. 50% of younger patients had 2–4 mm backward movement of Pg and another 25% had >4 mm. 15% of older patients had 2–4 mm change and none had >4 mm. Long-term changes in younger patients who had 2-jaw surgery were greater than for mandibular advancement only. Changes in younger groups were greater than for adult groups. Satisfaction with treatment and perception of problems were similar for both groups