Partial Retirement and the Analysis of Retirement Behavior

This paper examines the phenomenon of partial retirement . Topics covered include: (1) the quantitative importance of partial retirement, (2) institutional constraints in addition to mandatory retirement which limit the opportunity to retire partially in the main job, (3) the effect of these constraints on the specification of the relevant structural equations in a life cycle retirement model, (4) the impact of standard explanatory variables on four outcomes -- complete retirement, partial retirement both in and outside the main job, and non-retirement, (5) the importance of partial retirement even for those who do not face mandatory retirement, are not covered by a pension and are healthy, (6) the sensitivity of results based on a dichotomous retirement variable to whether the partially retired are classified as retired or not retired. A number of studies have either treated partial retirement inappropriately or have adopted unrealistic assumptions about the opportunity set facing potential retirees. Our findings call their results into question.

A Model for Analyzing Youth Labor Market Policies

This paper formulates a model of the youth labor market. At the heart of the model is a minimum wage restriction which causes some youths to become unemployed and prevents others from training. Labor is assumed to be heterogeneous in performance on skilled iobs and is less productive as youths than as adults simply because of immaturity. The model is applied to analyze the effects of three representative policies: a youth subminimum wage, subsidies paid to firms that hire youths, and training subsidies that offset the costs of on-the-job training.

Personal Accounts and Family Retirement

This paper constructs a model of retirement and saving by two earner couples. The model includes three dimensions of behavior: the joint determination of retirement and saving; heterogeneity in time preference; and the interdependence of retirement decisions of husbands and wives. Estimation is based on panel data from the Health and Retirement Study covering the period 1992 to 2000. When husbands postpone their retirement so they can retire together with their typically younger wives, the spike in retirement at age 62 is smeared to later ages. Thus retirements differ between one and two earner families. We find both an asymmetry in which husbands prefer their wife to be retired before they retire, and a clear distaste of many husbands to retiring when their wives are in poor health, while the wives are willing to stay at home with sickly husbands. We simulate a system of personal Social Security accounts based on a 10.6 percent contribution rate over the lifetime. One version allows individuals to make lump sum withdrawals at retirement instead of annuitizing. This program would increase the retirement rates of husbands at age 62 by about 15 percentage points compared to the current system. Adding a lump sum option, by itself, would increase retirements at 62 by about 6 percentage points.

Social Security Reform and Labor Supply

A structural life-cycle retirement model with an improved specification over previous models is used to analyze and compare the long-run labor supply effects of the rules for Social Security in place in 1972,1977 and 1983, and for an actuarially fair system. The effects of separate provisions from the 1983 amendments are examined. These include the raising of the normal retirement age to 67, the increase in the delayed retirement credit to 8 percent, and the lowering of the reduction rate for earnings over the test amount to one dollar for every three dollars of earnings.

Labor Markets and Evaluations of Vocational Training Programs in the Public High Schools - Toward a Framework for Analysis

A simplified model is constructed to analyze the role played by vocational training programs In high schools. The model assumes that there are two kinds of educational programs in high schools, vocational and general. It also assumes that there are two types of jobs for high school graduates. One job requires training that either can be obtained from a vocational program in high school or as general training on the job. The other job has no special training requirements. The model is used in two ways. First, it is used to examine how the equilibrium outcome is affected by limitations on the number of places in the vocational training program and by the minimum wage. Second, it helps to determine what can be. learned from studies that take what has become a standard approach to evaluating high school vocational training programs -- attempting to estimate the productivity of this program by comparing the earnings of vocational and nonvocational program graduates. We conclude that whether or not limitations on enrollments In vocational programs and minimum wages influence the wage difference between vocational and nonvocational program graduates, findings based on the standard approach to cost-benefit analysis of high school vocational training programs may prove to be highly misleading guides for policy.

What People Don't Know About Their Pensions and Social Security: An Analysis Using Linked Data from the Health and Retirement Study

Pension plan descriptions from respondents to the 1992 Health and Retirement Study are compared with descriptions obtained from their employers. Earnings histories reported by respondents are compared with earnings histories from the Social Security Administration. The probability of linking employer pension data, which is two thirds for current jobs, and of obtaining permission to link an earnings history, which is over 70 percent, are not well explained by respondent characteristics. Half of respondents with linked pension data correctly identify plan type, and fewer than half identify, within one year, dates of eligibility for early and normal retirement benefits. Benefit reduction rates are essentially not reported. Respondents do better in reporting pension values, but the unexplained variation is still considerable. In contrast, respondent reported values, together with other observables, account for 80 percent of the variation in pension values and 75 percent of the variation in covered earnings measured from linked records. Thus prospects are good for imputing plan values, but not for imputing the location or size of early retirement incentives. Our findings raise questions about how well respondents understand complex pension and Social Security rules.

The New Social Security Commission Personal Accounts: Where Is the Investment Principal?

The President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security suggests three plans for reforming Social Security. These plans divert various amounts of the payroll tax to a personal account if the worker chooses to participate in the account. In return, Social Security benefits are offset using accounts with real returns ranging from 2% to 3.5%. In addition, the second and third plans proposed by the Commission include features that are designed to balance the finances of the system by reducing the rate of growth of benefits relative to the levels prescribed under current law, to make the system more redistributive, and to make other changes. The measures to increase redistribution and resolve the solvency of the system are relatively separate from the personal accounts. When 'personal accounts' are mentioned, most people think of accounts that are in some sense separate and shielded from the uncertainties of the Social Security system. That is not the case for the personal accounts proposed by the Commission. Because the participating individual is not entitled to the principal in the account, participating in the account does not shield the individual from the political risks of being in the Social Security system. The offset to the plan essentially taxes away the principal in the account, but leaves intact the full Social Security benefit, so that any change in retirement income due to the account reflects the difference in interest earned on the portfolio beyond a stated real rate of interest offset. Thus our analysis describes the account as a financial instrument equivalent to a bet that the real return will exceed the level of offset specified in the plan, ranging from 2 percent to 3.5 percent real. As a result, the reduction in political risk fostered by the Commission's proposals comes mainly from the improvement in the financial status of the system fostered by other provisions of the recommended plans. Measures to improve the benefits of low income individuals, widows and widowers and to enhance the rewards to retirement all create incentive effects that are also discussed in the paper.

Retirement Effects of Proposals by the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security

This paper simulates the retirement effects of the various elements of proposals made by the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security (CSSS). Simulations are based on a structural dynamic model of retirement and savings estimated with data from the first five waves of the Health and Retirement Study. This model posits lifetime expected utility is constrained by an asset accumulation equation and an uncertain lifetime. Retirement preferences and time preferences are both allowed to be heterogeneous among workers, allowing the model to capture the peaks in retirement at both ages 62 and 65. Simulating over the next 75 years, the model suggests that the trend to earlier retirement, which has only recently been interrupted, should continue. The effect of Commission proposals is to provide individuals with incentives to delay their retirement substantially. The overall effect of these proposals could be enough to offset, or more than offset the trend to earlier retirement. The largest effects on retirement in the Commission proposals comes from a provision in Model 2 which would keep benefits roughly constant in real terms. Compared to current law, which allows benefits to grow with wages, in 2075 years this provision would increase the fraction of those 62 years old at full-time work from 39 percent to 46 percent of the cohort. Indexing benefits to life expectancy, as in Plan 3, would lower the effect to 4 percentage points, about the same effect as allowing the system to continue, and after the trust fund is exhausted, paying benefits proportional to revenue. By 2075 a proposal in the Commission’s Model 3 to reduce benefits of early retirees, but raise the actuarial adjustment for those who postpone retirement past the normal retirement age, would create a 3.4 percentage point increase in full-time work for those 65 years old, increasing the number of 65 year olds working full-time by fifteen percent. Other elements of the proposals, including increasing benefits for low wage workers and reducing benefits for high wage workers, would produce only very modest changes in retirement behavior, even within affected groups.

Retirement in a Family Context: A Structural Model for Husbands and Wives

A structural econometric model of retirement of married couples is specified and estimated with recent panel data from the NLS for Mature Women. A coincidence of spouses retiring together, despite the younger ages of wives, suggests explicit efforts at coordination. The estimates suggest that one reason is a coincidence of tastes for leisure. More importantly, each spouse, and perhaps husbands in particular, values retirement more once their spouse has retired. The opportunity set accounts for peaks in the retirement hazards of each spouse, but coordination in opportunities is not responsible for coordination of retirement dates.