A Life-Cycle Analysis of Health, Family Structure, Wealth, and Retirement

描述（由申请人提供）：该提案将把现有的关于健康、家庭结构、财富和退休之间关系的工作整合到一个单一的退休建模框架中。这样一个框架将使研究和政策界受益，因为它提供了对退休过程的全面了解，并为评价随之而来的政策问题提供了基础。这项工作将建立一个动态的、生命周期的结构模型，以保健和女性劳动力供应的作用为特色。它将使用健康与退休研究（HRS）及其相关的社会保障收入记录和消费者支出调查（CEX）来估计模型参数。该提案的具体目标是：1)开发和估计一个动态的、结构的家庭储蓄、消费和退休行为模型，该模型以年龄相关的健康状况变化为特征。现有的指标表明，老年健康状况的恶化导致家庭消费的上升、水平或下降。我们的框架包含了这三个规范。最近的注意力集中在退休后家庭消费明显的系统性下降上，我们的框架再次包含了许多突出的解释，并提供了检验它们的可能性。2)建立并估计一个以家庭生产和市场-工作时间分配决策为特征的家庭行为生命周期模型。女性劳动力供给似乎比男性更有弹性，大概是因为家庭生产内外的替代。如果家庭生产的价值很大，一个完整的生命周期模型不能忽略它。不幸的是，直接测量几乎是不可能的。我们的框架使我们能够间接地评估可能影响退休行为的家庭生产的变化。3)建立和估计一个整合目标1-2特征的模型。为了获得最准确的参数估计和预测，需要一个集成模型。对于政策分析和未来的工作，一个综合的模型显然是可取的。例如，我们感兴趣的是模拟未来寿命和健康状况的增长对退休和储蓄的可能影响，可能的社会保障改革的后果，以及更多女性选择职业工作对家庭退休年龄的影响——在所有情况下，健康和女性劳动力供给都将发挥重要作用。未来分析的重要主题包括与休闲和支出之间互补性程度有关的退休行为趋势；双职业配偶退休决策的结果分析家庭应对不可保风险的策略；私人代际转移，包括遗赠。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal would integrate existing work on the relationships among health, family structure, wealth, and retirement within a single retirement modeling framework. Such a framework would benefit the research and policy communities by providing a comprehensive understanding of the retirement process and a basis for evaluating attendant policy concerns. The work would develop a dynamic, life-cycle, structural model that features the roles of health and female labor supply. It would estimate model parameters using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and its linked Social Security earning records, and the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX). The proposal's specific aims are: 1) To develop and estimate a dynamic, structural model of household saving, consumption, and retirement behavior that features age-related health- status changes. Existing specifications imply that health deterioration in old age leads to rising, level, or declining household consumption. Our framework nests all three specifications. Recent attention has focused on apparent systematic drops in household consumption at retirement, and, again, our framework nests a number of prominent explanations and offers the possibility of testing them. 2) To develop and estimate a life-cycle model of household behavior that features home-production and market-work time allocation decisions. Female labor supply seems more elastic than male, presumably because of substitution in and out of home production. If the value of home production is large, a complete life-cycle model cannot overlook it. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to measure directly. Our framework enables us indirectly to assess changes in home production that may affect retirement behavior. 3) To develop and estimate a model integrating the features of Aims 1-2. An integrated model is necessary to obtain the most accurate parameter estimates and predictions. For policy analysis and future work, an integrated model is obviously desirable. For example, we are interested in simulating the likely effects of future increases in longevity and health status on retirement and saving, the consequences of possible Social Security reforms, and the implications for household retirement ages of higher fractions of women choosing career jobs - and in all cases, health and women's labor supply will both play significant roles. Important topics for future analysis include trends in retirement behavior related to the degree of complementarity between leisure and expenditures; outcomes of dual-decision making about retirement for spouses who each have career jobs; household strategies for coping with uninsurable risks; and, private intergenerational transfers, including bequests.