April Yanyuan Wu

How do people with disabilities cope while waiting for disability insurance benefits

Disability Insurance waiting time varies from a few months to several years. We estimate the causal effect of longer waiting times on the use of five financial coping strategies. We find that SNAP benefits are the most responsive to longer waiting times. Moreover, while spousal employment is not responsive to longer wait times, spousal employment leads to longer waiting times, presumably because these applicants are more able to appeal. Together, these results suggest that coping strategies are used to both help applicants during the wait time and to extend the waiting time and increase their probability of success.JEL Classification CodeH53; J08; I3

Lower-Income Individuals Without Pensions: Who Misses Out and Why?

In 2010, only 19 percent of individuals ages 50-58 whose household incomes were less than 300 percent of the poverty line participated in a pension of any kind at their current jobs, compared to 56 percent of those above 300 percent of poverty. This paper investigates this pension gap. In particular, we decompose the pension participation rate into its four elements in order to compare coverage between higher- and lower-income individuals: 1) the fraction of people who are currently working (the employment rate); 2) the fraction of workers who are in firms that offer pension benefits to at least some workers (the offer rate); 3) the fraction of workers who are eligible for pension benefits, conditional on being in a firm where it is offered (the eligibility rate); and 4) the fraction of workers who enroll in a pension plan when they are eligible (the take-up rate). We find that the substantial pension gap between higher- and lower-income individuals is driven primarily by the lower-income group’s lower employment rate and the smaller probability of working for an employer that offers pensions; when lower-income workers do have a pension plan at work, their eligibility and take-up rates are nearly equivalent to higher-income workers. We also find that the factors associated with a higher value for each element of pension participation are very consistent: higher education and income, previous pension history, and job characteristics including firm size, occupation, job tenure, and union status. Together, these findings suggest that policies such as automatic enrollment that focus on pension eligibility or take-up are unlikely to close the pension coverage gap between older, lower-income individuals and their higher-income contemporaries; instead, greater pension participation requires more jobs and, in particular, more “good jobs.”

Does Social Security Continue to Favor Couples

While dramatic increases in women’s labor supply and earnings have led to a substantial decline in the fraction of women eligible for spouse benefits at retirement, most wives still receive a survivor benefit, as wives still typically have lower earnings than their husbands and live longer. Using the MINT microsimulation model and the HRS data linked with Social Security administrative earnings records, this paper examines the extent to which Social Security continues to favor couples and will do so in the future. The paper found that: - While the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance program still distributes lifetime income from singles to couples, the transfers appear to be shrinking over time. - Nevertheless, couples are still projected to have a higher benefit/tax ratio, a lower median net tax rate, and a greater likelihood of receiving positive net transfers from the system compared to those who are never married or divorced. - The increased labor force participation and earnings of women have contributed significantly to the decline in redistribution from men to women, and from singles to couples, while the effect of declining marriage rates has only a modest effect. The policy implications of the findings are: - Family benefit provisions within the Social Security program can have a significant impact on various measures of redistribution. - Policymakers may find the results of this paper helpful in evaluating any reform proposals that would change these provisions.

WILL DELAYED RETIREMENT BY THE BABY BOOMERS LEAD TO HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT AMONG YOUNGER WORKERS

Using 1977-2011 data from the Current Population Survey, this paper investigates the often-repeated claim that delayed retirement by baby boomers will result in higher unemployment among the young, a claim which has been garnering increased attention from the media during the Great Recession. It explores both time-series and cross-state variation, and uses state-level regressions and instrumental-variable models to determine the extent to which such “crowding out” exists in the United States. The estimates show no evidence that increasing the employment of older persons reduces the job opportunities or wage rates of younger persons. Indeed, the evidence suggests that greater employment of older persons leads to better outcomes for the young in the form of reduced unemployment, increased employment, and a higher wage. The patterns are consistent for both men and women and for groups with different levels of education. Estimates using elderly male mortality rates as instrumental variables also produce no consistent evidence that changes in the employment rates of older workers adversely affect the employment and wage rate of their younger counterparts. If anything, the opposite is true. Finally, despite the fact that the labor market downturn that accompanied the Great Recession was the most severe experienced in the post-war era, the effects of elderly employment on other segments of the labor market do not differ from those during typical business cycles.

How Do Subjective Longevity Expectations Influence Retirement Plans

Increasing life expectancy has made working longer both more necessary and more possible, but the relationship between an individual’s survival expectations and his planned retirement age is unclear in the existing literature. This study uses the Health and Retirement Study and an instrumental variables (IV) approach to examine how subjective life expectancy influences planned retirement ages and expectations of working at older ages, and how individuals update those expectations when they receive new information. The estimates in this paper suggest a large and statistically significant relationship between subjective life expectancy and retirement expectations: a one-standard-deviation increase in optimism about living to ages 75 or 85 is associated with an 8-percent to 24-percent increase over the mean probability of working at these ages. Actual retirement behavior also increases with subjective life expectancy, but the relationship is somewhat weaker. Our IV estimates using parents’ longevity as instruments are largely consistent with our reduced form estimates, strengthening the conclusion that subjective life expectancy impacts both retirement planning and actual retirement behaviors. Finally, we find that increases over time in subjective life expectancy are associated with increases in the probability of planning to work at ages 62 and 65. The results further our understanding of how survival and retirement expectations are “anchored” to the previous generation’s experience and suggest how targeted efforts at increasing knowledge about rising life expectancy may increase the proportion of younger cohorts who decide to work longer.

DO TAX INCENTIVES INCREASE 401(K) RETIREMENT SAVING? EVIDENCE FROM THE ADOPTION OF CATCH-UP CONTRIBUTIONS

The U.S. government subsidizes retirement saving through 401(k) plans with

How Do the Disabled Cope While Waiting for SSDI

61.4 billion in tax expenditures annually, but the question of whether these tax incentives are effective in increasing saving remains unanswered. Using longitudinal U.S. Social Security Administration data on tax-deferred earnings linked to the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the project examines whether the “catch-up provision,” which was enacted in 2001 and allows workers over age 50 to contribute more to their 401(k) plans, has been effective in increasing earnings deferrals. Compared with similar workers under age 50, the study finds that contributions increased by

Overcoming Barriers to Life Insurance Coverage: A Behavioral Approach

540 more among age-50-plus individuals who had approached the 401(k) tax-deferral limits prior to turning 50, suggesting that the older individuals respond to the expanded tax incentives. For this group, the elasticity of retirement savings to the tax incentive is quite high: a one-dollar increase in the tax-deferred limit leads to an immediate 49-cent increase in 401(k) contributions.

What Impact Does Social Security Have on the Use of Public Assistance Programs Among the Elderly

The wait time for a Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) award varies from a few months to several years. Little is known about how applicants fund their consumption during this period. Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) linked to the Social Security Administration’s 831 file, this study examines the use of seven different coping strategies on which applicants may rely for resources, including government transfers, intra-family resources, other financial resources, and locational changes. Our results suggest that applicants use some coping strategies more frequently with longer application duration, especially spousal employment, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program for the disabled and children. They are also less likely to report receiving Unemployment Insurance benefits, changing their address, and owning a home. Together, these results suggests that some of the studied coping strategies are an important part of funding consumption during the application process, either by sustaining ongoing applications or by making it easier to file an appeal of an initially denied application.

Who Pays for Seniors Housing and Care Communities? Evidence from the Residents Financial Survey

While life insurance purchase decisions have long been studied, we still do not know how people decide if they need insurance or how much they need. Using in-depth interviews, we peer into the black box of employee decision-making to learn what people know about this employee-benefit, and how they decide if it is of value to them. We find that individuals understand the need for life insurance but find many behavioral economic barriers to getting adequate coverage, including mental accounting, money illusion, and the strong role of defaults. We then conduct an online experiment of the hypothetical employee-benefit purchase scenario and find a few, simple interventions could help individuals better decide their life insurance needs.