In the face of rising life expectancies, many policy experts argue that today’s workers can retire later and still spend the same fraction of their lives in retirement as past generations. But such an argument assumes that all workers, regardless of socioeconomic status (SES), have experienced the same increase in life expectancy.

In several countries where pensions are reformed and the retirement age is increased, the issue came up to make an exception for workers with demanding occupations, since health considerations may make it unreasonable to expect them to work longer. We analyze unique Dutch survey data on the public's opinions on what are demanding occupations, on whether it is justified that someone with a demanding occupation can retire earlier, and on the willingness to contribute to an earlier retirement scheme for such occupations through higher taxes.

Much of the disagreement over whether households are adequately prepared for retirement reflects differences in assumptions regarding the extent to which consumption declines when the kids leave home.

While declines in physical and mental performance are inevitable as workers age, they are not uniform across the various systems of the body – some physical and cognitive abilities decline much earlier than others.  This variance implies that workers in occupations that rely on skills that decline early may be unable to work until late ages, even as policy changes like increases in the Full Retirement Age (FRA) encourage them to.

Based on large-scale survey data from the 2006-2012 waves of the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS) we show that individual portfolio decisions are influenced by a variety of traits and facets traditionally investigated in the field of personality psychology.

Americans need to save more on their own for retirement, but human nature suggests they will focus more on day-to-day financial needs.

The magnitude of the effect that health has on the retirement decision has long been studied. We examine the reverse relationship, whether or not retirement has a direct impact on later-life health. In order to identify the causal relationship, we use unexpected early retirement window offers to instrument for retirement behavior.

Modeling of subjective survival is critical to the use of mortality expectations in economic  models and the life insurance industry. Subjective scaling factors that are used to adjust average survival probabilities for individual expectations are often based on a single observation of personal life expectancy and assumed to be constant for any projected target age.

One of the major challenges for national governments, pension funds, and life/pension insurance companies is to stimulate people to think about their retirement income.

Unsustainable growth in program costs and beneficiaries, together with a growing recognition that even people with severe impairments can work, led to fundamental disability policy reforms in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Great Britain. In Australia, rapid growth in disability recipiency led to more modest reforms.

We use unique Dutch survey data to analyze the general public’s opinions on what are demanding occupations, to what extent it is justified that someone with a demanding occupation can retire earlier, and on the willingness to contribute to the earlier retirement schemes of such occupations.

This report provides the findings of a study commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), designed to explore charging levels and structures in trust- and contract-based pension schemes and to understand the characteristics of schemes that maximise the chance of better outcomes for members.