Fundamental Factors Affecting The Wealth and Retirement of Elderly Americans

描述(由申请人提供)：项目摘要和摘要：该项目旨在提供有关美国家庭为退休做好财务准备的程度的新信息。我们依靠一个增强的生命周期模型来进行工作，该模型经过修改，以纳入我们研究的问题的各个部分的基本方面。我们把重点放在两个因素上，文献(和我们)认为这两个因素对退休后的财富有重要影响。首先，尽管有大量文献依赖于生命周期模型来考察财富积累，但很少有论文关注儿童的作用。我们的工作将突出儿童在财富积累中的作用。在这样做的过程中，我们将子女对财富的影响与资产和收入测试转移对财富的影响进行了比较。我们的工作对思考社会保障替代率也有潜在的重要影响。第二，我们将考察养老金对非养老金财富积累的作用。虽然大量的先前文献研究了这个主题，但我们的工作不同，完全考虑了一生(过去和未来)的资源。更重要的是，如果用于估计的样本中既有信贷约束的家庭，也有不受约束的家庭，过去对养老金对非养老金财富积累影响的估计很难解释。我们澄清了这些问题，并为养老金对财富积累的影响提供了一种新的思考方式。 我们提议的第三个项目将研究财富与退休预期和退休之间的互动方式。对于一些家庭来说，应对退休财富实际或预期的短缺(盈余)的一种方法是推迟(加速)退休。我们将使用实际净资产和最优净资产之间的差异(源自具有不确定性的扩展生命周期模型)来研究退休预期和财富与退休决策的关联方式。我们还将开发和估计一个新的退休模型的参数。我们的第四个项目将全面了解美国不同出生人群家庭退休财富准备的充分性。在早期的工作中，我们表明，出生于1931年至1941年之间的最初的HRS队列，在1992年压倒性地走上了拥有维持他们习惯生活水平所需的退休资源的轨道。然而，一个关键的悬而未决的问题是，这些结果在多大程度上适用于其他人群，特别是1941年后出生的人群。我们提出的工作将回答这个问题。公共卫生相关性：我们建议对了解美国人退休前和退休后生活水平的核心因素进行新的基本分析。财富和健康之间存在着有据可查的联系。了解与财富积累相关的因素可能会提高对健康-财富关系的理解。此外，消费和健康是老年家庭福祉的基本投入。我们的工作将为影响消费和幸福的因素提供新的模型和实证工作。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Project Summary and Abstract: This project is designed to provide new information on the degree to which American households are financially well-prepared for retirement. We rely on an augmented life-cycle model, modified to incorporate essential aspects of the various pieces of the problems that we study, to conduct our work. We focus on two factors that the literature (and we) believe are important influences on the wealth available for retirement. First, despite a vast literature relying on the life-cycle model to examine wealth accumulation, few papers focus on the role of children. Our work will highlight the role children play in wealth accumulation. In doing so, we compare the effects of children on wealth to the effects if asset- and income-tested transfers on wealth. Our work also has potentially important implications for thinking about Social Security replacement rates. Second, we will examine the role of pensions on non-pension wealth accumulation. While a large prior literature examines this topic, our work differs by accounting fully for lifetime (past and future) resources. More importantly, past estimates of the effects of pensions on non-pension wealth accumulation are difficult to interpret if there is a mixture of credit constrained and unconstrained households in the samples used for estimation. We clarify these issues and offer a new way of thinking about the effects of pensions on wealth accumulation. Our third proposed project will examine the way in which wealth interacts with retirement expectations and retirement. One way for some households to respond to actual or perceived shortfalls (surpluses) in retirement wealth is to defer (hasten) retirement. We will use differences between actual and optimal net worth (derived from an augmented life cycle model with uncertainty) to study the way retirement expectations and wealth are correlated with retirement decisions. We will also develop and estimate the parameters from a new model of retirement. Our fourth project will provide a comprehensive look at the adequacy of retirement wealth preparation of households in different U.S. birth cohorts. In earlier work we showed that the original HRS cohort, born between 1931 and 1941, overwhelmingly were on track in 1992 to having resources in retirement necessary to maintain their accustomed living standards. A critical unresolved issue, however, is the degree to which these results hold for other cohorts, particularly those born after 1941. Our proposed work will answer this question. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: We propose new fundamental analyses of factors central to understanding the living standards of Americans in and prior to retirement. There is a well-documented association between wealth and health. Understanding the factors associated with wealth accumulation may improve understanding of the health-wealth relationship. Moreover, consumption and health are fundamental inputs to the well-being of elderly households. Our work will provide new models and empirical work on factors influencing consumption and hence, well-being.