Using Health and Retirement Study data linked to summary plan descriptions and W-2s, this study reports trends in retirement wealth inequality of older employees 1992–2010. The study identifies and corrects methodological flaws in past research. Retirement wealth is highly unequally distributed; the top lifetime earnings quintile holds half of all retirement wealth, the bottom quintile, only 1%. The top earnings quintile fared better in 2010 than in 1992, whereas bottom-quintile earners fared worse. But retirement wealth inequality mainly reflects inequality within earnings quintiles, resulting from inadequate savings, not outsize accumulations. Systemic flaws reduce median retirement wealth by 84%

This paper examines the intertemporal choice preference for long-term savings of cocoa farmers in Ghana. We test the uptake of two pension products: with one, famers are free to withdraw 50% of their savings with no penalties prior to retirement age; with the other, only 30%. Using a randomised controlled trial we test the difference in uptake of two pensions products where we vary the flexibility of cash withdrawals from the pension account. We find an overall higher uptake of the more flexible pensions account, especially for women, who cannot inherit land titles in Ghana.

This paper focuses on individuals over 50 and shows that considering persistence and low-income dynamics is essential for understanding poverty. We use administrative data for Canada from the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults. The paper shows that poverty for seniors is highly persistent and strongly depends on lifetime earnings. We show that beginning to receive a public pension implies a higher probability of exit from poverty. Public pensions thereby help to explain the lower overall incidence of poverty among the elderly. These results are confirmed in a dynamic probit model, which allows controlling for individuals' unobserved heterogeneity and state dependence. While public pensions do not eliminate poverty among older adults, they help to alleviate it by reducing persistence and increasing exit for those who are most at risk.

Delaying claiming of Social Security old-age benefits past the earliest eligibility age, age 62, raises the monthly benefit for a person's life. Despite arguments from both proponents and opponents of delayed claiming in academia and public discourse, little is known about whether claiming decisions lead to substantively different outcomes. We compare differences in outcomes between age-62 claimants and otherwise similar later claimants that are matched on health, employment, and financial characteristics at age 60. We find that age-62 claimers are substantially less likely to work after 62 and have persistently lower income into their 70s. Differences in assets emerged in the 70s, with early claimants having lower wealth, but we find no differences in mortality or self-reported financial hardship. The difference in wealth is driven primarily by a growth in wealth among later claimants rather than substantial decumulation by age-62 claimants.

This paper analyzes the performance of the Italian defined contribution guaranteed pension funds during the period 2008–2012 through a panel analysis. This paper is organized around three main research questions. The first one is focused on the probability of a guarantee payment in a given year. The second one deals with the determinants of the gap between actual return and minimum guaranteed yield on a yearly basis. The third one focuses on the factors affecting the weight of administrative and management costs and their relationship with the fund dimension.

This study uses a unique data set of retiree characteristics and salary histories for administrators, teachers, and non-professional employees of the Denver Public School Retirement System (DPSRS) to analyze surplus deferred compensation for DPSRS and four state K-12 defined benefit pension plans. We find sizable levels of surplus deferred compensation for each plan, with significant differences across plans, job classes, and age groups. Across plans, differences in cost of living allowances impact the expected present value of retirement benefits more than benefit table differences when controlling for each respective factor. Somewhat surprisingly, the plans in our study with the largest present value of future benefits had lower employee contribution rates. Pension wealth for reduced benefits showed larger wealth accrual at younger ages than full, unreduced benefits, and younger cohorts starting work at an earlier age received significantly higher surplus deferred compensation.

We study the short-, medium-, and long-run implications of stimulating annuity markets in a dynamic general-equilibrium overlapping-generations model. We find that beneficial partial-equilibrium effects of stimulating annuity markets are counteracted by negative general-equilibrium repercussions. Balancing the positive partial-equilibrium and negative general-equilibrium forces we show that there exists an intermediate level of annuitization such that the lifetime utility of steady-state agents is maximized. Studying the transition to this optimal degree of annuitization shows that currently middle-aged individuals stand to gain most from the stimulation of annuity markets. Complementing our main analysis, we highlight the centrality of the interplay between human-capital accumulation and annuity market policy.