2006
The Impact of Misperceptions about Social Security on Saving and Well-being
WP 2006-118 , UM05-10
Earlier research suggests that many people in their fifties and early sixties are not well informed about their Social Security benefit entitlements in old age. This paper investigates the effect of deviations between individuals’ anticipated and realized Social Security benefits…
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The Role of Conventional Retirement Age in Retirement Decisions
WP 2006-120 , UM05-11
Following Wave I HRS respondents for six waves (12 years) so that their actual retirement can be observed shows that the actual retirement hazard is substantially higher at (and around) the age that workers identified in Wave I as the…
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Social Security and Retirement Dynamics
WP 2006-121 , UM05-05
This paper is based on a structural model of retirement and saving, estimated with data for a sample of married men in the Health and Retirement Study. It explains the relation of specific features of Social Security -- the benefit…
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Savings Between Cohorts: the Role of Planning
WP 2006-122 , UM05-09
We compare the saving behavior of two cohorts: the Early Baby Boomers (EBB, age 51-56 in 2004) and the HRS cohort (age 51-56 in 1992). We find that EBB have accumulated more wealth than the previous cohort but they benefited…
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The Excess Burden of Government Indecision
WP 2006-123 , UM06-16
Governments are known for procrastinating when it comes to resolving painful policy problems. Whatever the political motives for waiting to decide, procrastination distorts economic decisions relative to what would arise with early policy resolution. In so doing, they engender excess…
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Optimizing the Retirement Decision: Asset Allocation, Annuitization, and Risk Aversion
WP 2006-124 , UM06-11
Retirees must draw down their accumulated assets in an orderly fashion so as not to exhaust their funds too soon. We derive the optimal retirement portfolio from a menu that includes payout annuities as well as an investment allocation and…
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Americans’ Dependency on Social Security
WP 2006-126 , UM06-16
According to a recent estimate by Gokhale and Smetters (2005), the present value difference between the U.S. government’s projected future expenditures and its projected future tax receipts exceeds $60 trillion. Closing this enormous fiscal gap requires a variety of different…
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How Changes in Social Security Affect Retirement Trends
WP 2006-127 , UM06-02
For married men, we find the conventional view of retirement trends -- that the long term trend to early retirement has been reversed -- is partially contradicted by recent data. Specifically, descriptive data collected from both the Census and the…
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How Accurate are Expected Retirement Savings?
WP 2006-128 , UM06-04
This paper examines the ability of workers nearing retirement to report their expected retirement savings, where retirement savings refers to funds held in savings, checking, and investment-type accounts. Responding to such a question is likely to be difficult, even for…
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Probabilistic Thinking and Early Social Security Claiming
WP 2006-129 , UM06-09
This study analyzes the extent to which an individual’s survival expectations influence his or her decision to claim social security benefits at an early age. We find that subjective survival probabilities capture meaningful behavioral responses to incentives for early Social…
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