The Economic Cost of Joint Retirement

描述（由申请人提供）：根据经验，我们观察到丈夫和妻子倾向于在同一时间退休。但由于女性倾向于嫁给年龄较大的男性，已婚夫妇共同退休意味着已婚女性比丈夫更早退休。本研究探讨已婚女性相对较早退休的机会成本。除非已婚夫妇以其他方式补偿失去的增加退休年金、储蓄和尽量减少健康保险费用的机会，否则妇女较年轻的退休将导致退休收入较低，从而可能加剧老年寡妇的贫困。该项目的具体目的是：(1)比较55-65岁已婚男女的年龄-收入情况，检验女性的斜率是否大于同年龄段的男性；(2)利用结构模型模拟不存在共同退休情况下已婚女性的反事实退休年龄；(3)通过比较已婚妇女实际退休年龄和实际退休年龄，计算放弃收入、养老金应计额、主动储蓄和雇主健康保险补贴的价值；(4)探讨对老年寡妇贫困的影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Empirically, we observe that husbands and wives tend to retire around the same time. But because women tend to marry older men, the joint retirement of married couples implies that married women retire at younger ages than their husbands do. This study investigates the opportunity costs of married women's relatively young retirement. Unless married couples compensate in other ways for foregone opportunities to increase retirement annuities, save, and minimize health insurance costs, women's younger retirement will result in lower retirement income and thus may contribute to poverty among elderly widows. The specific aims of the project are: (1) Compare the age-earnings profiles of married men and women between the ages of 55-65, and test whether the slope is greater for women than for men of the same age; (2) Simulate married women's counterfactual retirement age in the absence of joint retirement using a structural model; (3) Calculate the value of foregone earnings, pension accruals, active saving, and employer health insurance subsidies by comparing the observed and counterfactual retirement ages of married women; and (4) Explore the implications for poverty among elderly widows.