The strong link between health insurance and employment in the US may cause workers to delay retirement until they become eligible for Medicare at age 65. We investigate the impact of retiree health insurance on early retirement using employee-level data from 54 diverse firms. We find that retiree health coverage has its strongest effects at ages 62 through 64.

At this event, panelists will address pension reform challenges by presenting the results of three research papers commissioned by AEI through a generous grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation.

With graduation season nearly finished, another cohort of young workers is set to enter the labor force. Members of this cohort confront an immense challenge in planning for retirement: There is a great deal of uncertainty about the Social Security taxes and benefits they will face.

Those who follow the debate over fair-market valuation of public pension liabilities are aware that economists argue for using lower discount rates to value public pension liabilities but often are unaware of why economists believe what they do. This paper aims to better articulate those beliefs.

For a wide variety of reasons, many states and municipalities are turning a critical eye toward their employee retirement plans. As various parties debate the merits of different reform measures, it is important to keep in mind that in many states, the law limits potential reform options.

Current public pension valuation practice provides information on the expected costs associated with funding future benefits, which is relevant to policymakers and taxpayers. This paper argues that current practice is a better approach to measuring pension liability than is a theoretical market-based method. 

Public sector retirement benefits have come under fire in recent years, as state and local governments struggle to deal with large funding shortfalls. A number of recent studies have concluded that public sector workers are overpaid relative to their private sector counterparts. These studies raise a number of questions. Why are public sector workers so highly compensated?

But the chained CPI really isn't being proposed as a Social Security reform, as a way to make the program more solvent or better-functioning. True Social Security reforms think about ways to better protect the poor, or to encourage longer work lives, or increase retirement saving. The chained CPI, by contrast, is about producing savings within the 10-year budget scoring window. 

While women live longer than men, elderly women incur higher out-of pocket medical spending than men at each age. In this paper, we examine whether differences in marital status and living arrangements can explain this difference. We find that out-of-pocket medical spending is approximately 24 percent higher when an individual becomes widowed, a large portion of which is spending on nursing homes.

But by eliminating the cap, a person earning $225,000 would pay roughly four times more in taxes than he'll receive in benefits. A growing resemblance to a welfare plan would be inescapable.