Do Retirement Planning Strategies Alter the Effect of Time Preference on Retirement Wealth?

An individual’s willingness to accumulate retirement wealth is influenced by their preference for intertemporal consumption. People with a strong preference for current consumption (high personal discount rate) may choose to save less and face the risk of decreased retirement preparedness. A negative relation between a high personal discount rate and retirement wealth may be reduced when individuals engage in some form of retirement planning. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we provide evidence that respondents with a high personal discount rate…

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Is Student Loan Debt Discouraging Homeownership among Young Adults?

Amid concern that rising student loan debt has social and economic consequences for young adults, many suggest that student loan debt is leading young adults to forgo home buying.

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Foreclosures, House Prices, and the Real Economy

How did foreclosures vary by state during the Great Recession? Researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research and Princeton University found that whether or not the state had judicial requirements for foreclosures affected the rate of foreclosures during the crisis and the strength of recovery afterward

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Student Debt effects on Financial Well-being: Research and Policy Implications

How does student debt affect people’s financial wellbeing? A meta-analysis published in 2015 found that college graduates with debt had lower net worth, more difficultly accumulating assets, and less home equity than their debt-free peers.

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Retirement Security for Black, Non-Hispanic White, and Mexican-Origin Women: The Changing Roles of Marriage and Work

Changing family patterns and high rates of marital instability mean that women are increasingly responsible for their own retirement security. In this study we compare private retirement coverage among pre-retirement age people using multiple years of the Current Population Survey. We find that women are less likely than men to participate in employer-sponsored retirement plans. Married women are at highest risk of…

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Framing and Claiming: How Information-Framing Affects Expected Social Security Claiming Behavior

This article provides evidence that Social Security benefit claiming decisions are strongly affected by framing and are thus inconsistent with expected utility theory. Using a randomized experiment that controls for both observable and unobservable differences across individuals, we find that the use of a “breakeven analysis” encourages early claiming. Respondents are more likely to delay when…

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Do Women Pay More for Mortgages?

Do women pay more for mortgages than men? Research suggests that they do – and that part of the reason is because of differences in the way that men and women tend to decide which mortgage to choose.

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