Pensions In The Health And Retirement Study

This book presents a careful analysis of pension data collected by the Health and Retirement Study, a unique survey of people over the age of fifty conducted by the University of Michigan for the National Institute on Aging. The authors studied pensions as they evolve over individuals’ work lives and into retirement: how pension coverage and plans change over a lifetime, how many pensions workers have by the time they retire and what these pensions are worth, what pensions contribute to individual retirement incomes, and how trends and policy changes affect retirement plans. The book focuses on the major features of pensions, including plan type and participation, ages of eligibility for retirement, values of different pension types, how pension values are influenced by retirement age, how plans are settled when a worker leaves a firm, how well people understand their pensions, the importance of pensions in retirement saving and as a share of household wealth, and the vulnerability of the retirement age population to the current financial crisis. This book provides readers with an invaluable look at the crucial but ever-changing role of pensions in supporting retirees.

Pension plan descriptions from respondents to the 1992 Health and Retirement Study are compared with descriptions obtained from their employers. Earnings histories reported by respondents are compared with earnings histories from the Social Security Administration. The probability of linking employer pension data, which is two thirds for current jobs, and of obtaining permission to link an earnings history, which is over 70 percent, are not well explained by respondent characteristics. Half of respondents with linked pension data correctly identify plan type, and fewer than half identify, within one year, dates of eligibility for early and normal retirement benefits. Benefit reduction rates are essentially not reported. Respondents do better in reporting pension values, but the unexplained variation is still considerable. In contrast, respondent reported values, together with other observables, account for 80 percent of the variation in pension values and 75 percent of the variation in covered earnings measured from linked records. Thus prospects are good for imputing plan values, but not for imputing the location or size of early retirement incentives. Our findings raise questions about how well respondents understand complex pension and Social Security rules

This paper highlights unanswered research questions in the economics of retirement, and shows how these issues can be addressed using the new Health and Retirement Survey (HRS). Unique features of the survey are described including administrative records on earnings and social security benefits, and employer provided data on pensions and health insurance. Also collected are indicators of retirement plans, health status, family structure, income, wealth and employer policies affecting job opportunities and constraints. Data from the first wave of the HRS are used to analyze retirement outcomes and constraints shaping retirement behavior.

Together, pensions, social security and health insurance account for half of the wealth held by all households in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), for 60 percent of total wealth of HRS households who are in the 45th to 55th wealth percentiles, and even for 48 percent of wealth for those in the 90th to 95th wealth percentiles. The HRS surveys households aged 51 to 61 in 1992, and obtains pension plan descriptions from respondents' employers. Pension accrual profiles, income and wealth distributions by type, wealth-income ratios and accrued wealth by pension status are also explored.

The United States is in the midst of a major demographic shift. In the coming decades, people aged 65 and over will make up an increasingly large percentage of the population: The ratio of people aged 65+ to people aged 20-64 will rise by 80%. This shift is happening for two reasons: people are living longer, and many couples are choosing to have fewer children and to have those children somewhat later in life. The resulting demographic shift will present the nation with economic challenges, both to absorb the costs and to leverage the benefits of an aging population. Aging and the Macroeconomy: Long-Term Implications of an Older Population presents the fundamental factors driving the aging of the U.S. population, as well as its societal implications and likely long-term macroeconomic effects in a global context. The report finds that, while population aging does not pose an insurmountable challenge to the nation, it is imperative that sensible policies are implemented soon to allow companies and households to respond. It offers four practical approaches for preparing resources to support the future consumption of households and for adapting to the new economic landscape.

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, this paper creates variables measuring knowledge about future social security and pension benefits by comparing respondent reports of their expected benefits with benefits calculated from social security earnings records and employer provided descriptions of pension plans. The knowledge measures suggest that misinformation, imprecision and lack of information about retirement benefits is the norm. Those who are most dependent on social security are the least well informed about their social security benefits, while those who are most dependent on pensions are best informed about their pension benefits. Women and minorities are less well informed about both types of retirement benefits. Having documented the extent of misinformation, we turn to questions about the production of information, and the consequences of misinformation for real outcomes. Relating measures of information to planning activities, we find that those who plan are somewhat better informed than those who do not, but with the exception of having requested a social security earnings record, the effects of planning activities on knowledge are modest. In descriptive and reduced form equations for planned and actual retirement and saving, there is at best a modest relation of knowledge measures to planned and actual retirement and to nonpension, nonsocial security wealth as a share of lifetime earnings. Individuals who overestimate their benefits are likely to retire sooner than they planned, but the measured effects are relatively modest. Coefficients of measures of the increase in reward from postponed retirement are barely affected by the addition of measures of respondent knowledge of their retirement benefits to standard reduced form retirement and wealth equations.