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.

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.

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.

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.

Cluster Interpretation of Properties of Alternating Parity Bands in Heavy Nuclei

The properties of the states of the alternating parity bands in actinides, Ba, Ce and Nd isotopes are analyzed within a cluster model. The model is based on the assumption that cluster type shapes are produced by the collective motion of the nuclear system in the mass asymmetry coordinate. The calculated spin dependences of the parity splitting and of the electric multipole transition moments are in agreement with the experimental data.Comment: 29 pages, 10 figure

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

Many-body-QED perturbation theory: Connection to the Bethe-Salpeter equation

The connection between many-body theory (MBPT)--in perturbative and non-perturbative form--and quantum-electrodynamics (QED) is reviewed for systems of two fermions in an external field. The treatment is mainly based upon the recently developed covariant-evolution-operator method for QED calculations [Lindgren et al. Phys. Rep. 389, 161 (2004)], which has a structure quite akin to that of many-body perturbation theory. At the same time this procedure is closely connected to the S-matrix and the Green's-function formalisms and can therefore serve as a bridge between various approaches. It is demonstrated that the MBPT-QED scheme, when carried to all orders, leads to a Schroedinger-like equation, equivalent to the Bethe-Salpeter (BS) equation. A Bloch equation in commutator form that can be used for an "extended" or quasi-degenerate model space is derived. It has the same relation to the BS equation as has the standard Bloch equation to the ordinary Schroedinger equation and can be used to generate a perturbation expansion compatible with the BS equation also for a quasi-degenerate model space.Comment: Submitted to Canadian J of Physic

Nucleon Polarizabilities from Deuteron Compton Scattering within a Green's-Function Hybrid Approach

We examine elastic Compton scattering from the deuteron for photon energies ranging from zero to 100 MeV, using state-of-the-art deuteron wave functions and NN-potentials. Nucleon-nucleon rescattering between emission and absorption of the two photons is treated by Green's functions in order to ensure gauge invariance and the correct Thomson limit. With this Green's-function hybrid approach, we fulfill the low-energy theorem of deuteron Compton scattering and there is no significant dependence on the deuteron wave function used. Concerning the nucleon structure, we use Chiral Effective Field Theory with explicit \Delta(1232) degrees of freedom within the Small Scale Expansion up to leading-one-loop order. Agreement with available data is good at all energies. Our 2-parameter fit to all elastic $\gamma d$ data leads to values for the static isoscalar dipole polarizabilities which are in excellent agreement with the isoscalar Baldin sum rule. Taking this value as additional input, we find \alpha_E^s= (11.3+-0.7(stat)+-0.6(Baldin)) x 10^{-4} fm^3 and \beta_M^s = (3.2-+0.7(stat)+-0.6(Baldin)) x 10^{-4} fm^3 and conclude by comparison to the proton numbers that neutron and proton polarizabilities are essentially the same.Comment: 47 pages LaTeX2e with 20 figures in 59 .eps files, using graphicx. Minor modifications; extended discussion of theoretical uncertainties of polarisabilities extraction. Version accepted for publication in EPJ