Pulling Retirement Cash, but Not by Choice
Baby boomers’ mandatory withdrawals from 401(k)s, IRAs and other tax-deferred retirement accounts start in full force this year, touching off a massive shift of cash
Is student loan debt associated with less retirement savings?
Rising student debt levels mean that young workers must reduce either their consumption or their saving. To what extent do these workers cut back on retirement saving?
Employee Financial Literacy and Retirement Plan Behavior: A Case Study
This article uses administrative data on all active employees of the Federal Reserve (FR) System to examine participation in and contributions to the Thrift Saving Plan, the System’s defined contribution (DC) plan. We link to administrative records a unique employee survey of economic/demographic factors including a set of financial literacy questions. Not surprisingly, FR employees are substantially more…
Planning Ahead or Living a Day at a Time? A Family History of AD and Retirement Planning
An Alzheimer’s disease (AD) diagnosis has consequences that can extend beyond the individual to family members. These impacts, which are especially strong for caregivers, include worries about the health of the affected relative, changes in the caregiver’s health (eg, risk of depression), and/or distress regarding what the diagnosis portends for the caregiver’s own future health or that of other relatives. Family members may also experience…
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…
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…
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…