September 2023

Racial and Ethnic Differences in Longevity Perceptions and Implications for Financial Decision-Making

By Abigail Hurwitz, Olivia S. Mitchell & Orly Sade  Inaccurate perceptions regarding life expectancy can lead to suboptimal financial decisions with long-term consequences, including undersaving prior to retirement, and overspending during retirement. As prior research suggests that Covid-19 mortality has disproportionately harmed those with low incomes, African Americans, and Hispanics in the United States, we seek to determine whether subjective survival perceptions among these groups changed in a manner consistent with observed outcomes. We fielded two online experimental surveys of...

7 Expenses Most Likely To Drain Your Retirement Savings: How To Plan for Each One

You’re going to spend a good portion of your life working and saving for retirement. Once you reach that milestone, you want to feel confident that your nest egg is big enough to cover your needs in your golden years. As you’re planning for retirement, it’s important to anticipate some of the costs that could eat into your savings. Here are seven expenses that can drain your retirement savings — and how to plan for them. Healthcare Even with Medicare, out-of-pocket healthcare expenses can...

Contingency Fund: Individual Retiree Risk Management

By Jason Branning & Ray Grubbs  The goal of this article is to provide an actionable framework for contingency planning for individual retirees through the modern retirement theory (MRT) perspective. Contingency planning encompasses a retiree’s risk management processes, techniques, and strategies, along with a choice architecture. Our goal is to provide insights that are mitigating to those conditions within longevity that can impair or impact a retiree’s ability to remain retired. We offer three risk categories—known, unknown, and unknowable—as an...

Family Planning Confronts Delayed Retirement in China: The Retirement Intention of Only-Child Parents

By Xiao Yu, Yingdong Xu, Yue Sun & Luyao Jiao By establishing a labor-retirement model within China’s unique intergenerational support culture and one-child policy, this study provides evidence of the one-child policy’s early effect on individuals’ retirement decisions. This finding highlights a contradiction between the retirement intentions of the 1960s and 1970s generations, who are most affected by the one-child policy, and the delayed retirement policy of Chinese government. Utilizing data from the CHARLS 2011-2018 and employing OLS, IV, and...

August 2023

US. ‘Staggering’ Number of Adults Don’t Know How Long Retirements Last

They found that less than 40% of adults correctly identified the average lifespan at retirement age. “Longevity literacy is particularly important since retirement income security inherently involves planning, saving, and preparing for a period that is uncertain in length,” Surya Kolluri, head of the TIAA Institute, said in a statement. “Our research clearly demonstrates a lack of longevity literacy among the vast majority of U.S. adults. Improving this can promote better retirement security and mitigate longevity risk.” The researchers said there...

How to protect your retirement assets from inflation: Morningstar

Inflation is a buzzkill for personal finances, lowering the value of your savings and raising your spending levels. That’s especially an issue for retirees, who often have limited resources and may need them to last a long time. While inflation peaked in June 2022 at 9.1%, it still stood at 3.2% in July. That’s well above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. Christine Benz, director of retirement planning for Morningstar, has offered commentary on how to protect your retirement assets. At the portfolio...

July 2023

COVID-19, Home Equity and Retirement Funding

By Vishaal Baulkaran & Pawan Jain  We investigate the impact of COVID-19 on using home equity to fund retirement income. We show that financial planners believe that COVID-19 positively influenced their clients’ willingness to utilize home equity products to fund retirement income in particular, sell and downsize and HELOC options. For consumers, COVID-19 does not seem to have a major impact on the outlook on residential property, retirement income, retirement plan, or perceived/actual standard of living during retirement. However, there...

Early Retirement Provision for Elderly Displaced Workers

By Herman Kruse & Andreas Steinvall Myhre This paper studies the economic effects on re-employment and program substitution behavior among elderly displaced workers who exogenously lose eligibility for their early retirement option. We use detailed Norwegian matched employer-employee data containing information on bankruptcy dates and individual income, wealth, pensions and social security benefits. As job displacement before a certain age cut-off results in the loss of eligibility for early retirement benefits between ages 62–67 years in Norway, we are able...

Strengthening Retirement Income Security: Fairer Tax Rules and More Options Needed

By Alexandre Laurin & George Turpie  Simple changes to tax rules can improve retirement security for Canadians, as well as make the retirement system more equitable among different classes of savers, and more efficient at managing longevity risks for capital decumulation. This E-Brief provides a discussion of needed retirement-related tax changes impacting members of capital accumulation plans, such as RRSPs and defined-contribution (DC) plans, divided into the accumulation and decumulation phases. Among the key tax changes recommended for the accumulation phase:...

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Retirement Outcomes: Impacts of Outreach

By Angelino Viceisza, Amaia Calhoun & Gabriella J.O. Lee We review select literature on racial and ethnic disparities in retirement outcomes in the United States and the impact of outreach on such outcomes. First, there are significant disparities in retirement outcomes, reflecting a long history of racism and structural barriers. Second, there is comparatively little work on the differential impact of retirement outreach across race and ethnicity. Future work should consider designing interventions that cater to the needs of specific...