Many nations incentivize retirement saving by letting workers defer taxes on pension contributions, imposing them when retirees withdraw their funds. Using a dynamic life-cycle model, we show how ‘Rothification’ – that is, taxing 401(k) contributions rather than payouts – alters saving, investment, consumption, and Social Security claiming patterns. We find that taxing pension contributions instead of withdrawals leads to delayed retirement, somewhat lower lifetime tax payments, and relatively small reductions in consumption. Indeed, the two tax regimes generate quite similar relative inequality metrics: the relative consumption inequality ratio under taxed-exempt-exempt (TEE) is only 4% higher than that in the exempt-exempt-taxed (EET) case. Moreover, results indicate that the Gini measures are also strikingly similar under the EET and the TEE regimes for lifetime consumption, cash on hand, and 401(k) assets, differing by only 1–4%. While tax payments are higher early in life under the TEE regime, they are slightly lower in the long run. Moreover, higher EET tax payments are also accompanied by higher volatility. We therefore find few reasons for policymakers to favor either tax approach on egalitarian or revenue-enhancing grounds.

Countries make differing policy choices. They can serve as a scientific laboratory for drawing lessons on the policy paths to follow or to avoid and the consequences of those institutional choices on individuals at older ages. In this special issue we bring together six articles that evaluate the influence of institutions on retirement decisions, health and well-being of older adults using common data that have emerged with the international network of health and retirement studies to study key life outcomes such as health, work, and lifecycle transitions at older ages.

Using detailed spending and time use data from the Netherlands, this paper analyzes the causal effect of retirement on spending and time use decisions. Both total consumption and disaggregated consumption categories are considered. We do not find empirical evidence for drops in households' total non-durable spending at retirement. Our estimates suggest increases in spending at retirement on goods that are complementary to leisure, but no decreases in spending on goods that are replaceable by home production. The quantitative implication of our empirical results for the Life-Cycle Model is an intertemporal elasticity of substitution for leisure below unity.

Mexico and the United States both face rapid population aging as well as older populations with high poverty rates. Among the most vulnerable populations of retirement age in either nation are Mexican immigrants to the United States. This work uses data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study and the Mexican Health and Aging Study to assess retirement decisions among persons born in Mexico and working in either nation as well as such decisions by non-Hispanic Whites in the United States. Social security system incentives matter for the retirement of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. but not for return-migrants in Mexico.

In this paper, we derive the optimal cyclical design of a target benefit (TB) pension plan that balances the sustainability and the benefit stability using the optimal control approach. The optimal design possesses a linear risk sharing structure with cyclical parameters. We observe that the optimal design should be pro-cyclical in the usual circumstances, but counter-cyclical when the pension plan is severely in deficit. We compare the TB plans with the defined benefit plans and conclude that a more aggressive investment strategy should be adopted for the TB plans. In the end, we provide a cautionary note on the optimal control approach in the study of the TB plans.

We explore whether ageist stereotypes in job ads are detectable using machine-learning methods measuring the linguistic similarity of job-ad language to ageist stereotypes identified by industrial psychologists. We then conduct an experiment to evaluate whether this language is perceived as biased against older workers searching for jobs. We find that job-ad language classified by the machine-learning algorithm as closely related to ageist stereotypes is perceived by experimental subjects as biased against older job seekers. These methods could potentially help enforce anti-discrimination laws by using job ads to predict or identify employers more likely to be engaging in age discrimination.

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 examines inter-industry patterns of the employment of older workers over the last 20 years to understand where employment opportunities have grown the most. The underlying premise is that firms strategically align their age mix depending on production function and labor cost parameters. The industries that had the largest increases in the percentage of older workers were those that had the broadest pension coverage and those that made the greatest use of high-tech capital. There also is evidence in 2001–07 that the percentage of older workers increased more in the industries most exposed to increased Chinese imports.

We use administrative data on federal civilian workers' accounts in their employer-provided defined contribution plan, called the thrift savings plan (TSP), to provide new evidence on the effects of employer matching and defaults on workers' savings behavior. The empirical analysis relies on exogenous variation stemming from two natural experiments caused by policy changes to the TSP: the establishment of an employer match for workers hired after 1983 and the introduction of automatic enrollment for workers hired after July 2010. We find that the introduction of the employer match lead to a higher increase in both participation and contribution rates compared to the subsequent switch to automatic enrollment. In terms of portfolio allocations, we find that matching and automatic enrollment had small and minimal effects, respectively.

We study causal effects of two early retirement reforms. Reform 1 increased normal retirement age stepwise from 60 to 63. Simultaneously, it became possible to use early retirement with benefit discounts. Reform 2 increased the age of early retirement stepwise from 60 to 63. We investigate behavioral responses to the reforms using administrative data and difference-in-differences strategies. We find strong and significant causal effects of both reforms. Individuals postponed retirement, stayed employed longer, postponed unemployment, and shifted to alternative pathways into retirement. The overall use of the retirement system declined by about 1.5 and 2 months per person after each of the two reforms. Individuals with low pension wealth and those who were affected immediately by the reform responded more strongly.

This paper documents the patterns and correlates of retirement in China using a nationally representative survey, the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. After documenting stark differences in retirement ages between urban and rural residents, the paper shows that China's urban residents retire earlier than workers in many Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries and that rural residents continue to work until advanced ages. Differences in access to generous pensions and economic resources explain much of the urban–rural difference in retirement rates. The paper suggests that reducing disincentives created by China's Urban Employee Pension system, improving health status, providing childcare and elder care support may all facilitate longer working lives. Given spouse preferences for joint retirement, creating incentives for women to retire later may facilitate longer working lives for both men and women.

We study how pension participation and expected pension benefits affect working-age adults’ consumption based on a nationally representative dataset from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) during the period 2011–2018. We find that the consumption of working-age adults who participate in China's Residents' Basic Pension is 15.4% higher than that of non-participants. Furthermore, we find that if working-age adults' expected pension benefits increase by RMB 1, their consumption will increase by RMB 0.34. Overall, our findings suggest that pension expectations are critical to the consumption decisions of working-age adults and can, therefore, positively affect total domestic consumption.

This paper uses the Current Population Survey to study older workers' transitions out of employment and into retirement during the first year of the pandemic. We find that, among workers ages 55 to 79, the likelihood of leaving employment over the course of a year rose by 6.7 percentage points, a 43-percent increase over baseline. Workers without a college degree, Asian–Americans, those whose jobs were not amenable to social distancing, and part-time workers saw disproportionate impacts. In contrast, the likelihood of retiring increased by 1 percentage point, and there was no immediate retirement boom for full-time workers under 70.

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 presents the results of a choice experiment that is designed to examine whether changing how plan information is presented affects planned retirement-savings behavior. The main hypothesis is that providing plan information in a more concise format with helpful recommendations, rather than providing lengthy and detailed information, will alter retirement-planning choices. The specific choices examined include: whether to enroll, how much to contribute, and how to structure (broadly) the asset allocation. The choice experiment is conducted on three different samples: (i) a Qualtrics panel of new employees, (ii) a Qualtrics panel of job seekers, and (iii) a sample of business-school students. Our results suggest that, controlling for demographic and other factors, our main hypothesis was not supported by the data in any of the samples. Thus, the data cast some doubt on the notion that simplifying and condensing the retirement-plan information presented to employees will result in vastly different retirement-planning choices.

In 2015, the U.S. Treasury Department launched myRA, a no-fee retirement account designed for people who lacked employer-sponsored retirement options. We report findings from two behavioral field experiments intended to motivate interest in using the tax refund to open and fund myRAs directly through the tax-filing process. These experiments, administered to more than 100,000 low-income tax filers in 2016, embedded persuasive messages in emails sent to filers and directly within online tax-filing software. We find that interest in myRA was generally very low, although interest and enrollment intentions varied depending on the framing of the program's benefits.

Many pension reforms in OECD countries included pension statements with the objective of improving individuals' financial security in retirement. Our objective is to assess the effectiveness of the pension information policy implemented in France and to investigate whether the pension statement results in better informed workers, who then increase their retirement savings. Using regression discontinuity designs combined with quantile regressions, we assess whether the changes in retirement savings and holding of assets are due to the pension information system and then quantify the impact. We conclude that a pension estimate sent to workers encourages the wealthiest to increase their retirement savings while it does not influence the savings of individuals with a low level of wealth.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a large and immediate drop in employment among U.S. workers, along with major expansions of unemployment insurance (UI) and work from home. We use Current Population Survey and Social Security application data to study employment among older adults and their participation in disability and retirement insurance programs through the second year of the pandemic. We find ongoing improvements in employment outcomes among older workers in the labor force, along with sustained higher levels in the share no longer in the labor force during this period. Applications for Social Security disability benefits remain depressed, particularly for Supplemental Security Income. In models accounting for the expiration of expanded UI, we find some evidence that the loss of these additional financial supports resulted in an increase in disability claiming. Social Security retirement benefit claiming is approximately 3% higher during the second year of the pandemic.

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.