Annual Meeting of the Retirement Research Consortium
National Press Club, Washington, DC
August 4-5, 2016
Thursday, August 4
8:00 – 8:30 AM
8:30 – 8:45
8:45 – 10:15
10:15 – 10:30
10:30 – 12:00
12:00
12:30
1:15 – 2:45
2:45 – 3:00
Coffee and Registration
Welcome
Introduction of Center Directors
Panel 1: Health, Health Insurance, and Choice of When to Retire
• Does Public Health Insurance Affect Early Retirement?
Angshuman Gooptu, Bradley Heim (Indiana University) and Kosali Simon (Indiana
University/NBER)
• The Affordable Care Act as Retiree Health Insurance: Implications for Retirement
and Social Security Claiming
Alan Gustman (Dartmouth College/NBER), Thomas Steinmeier (Texas Tech
University), and Nahid Tabatabai (Dartmouth College)
• The Effects of Health on the Labor Supply of Older Workers
Richard Blundell, Jack Britton, Monica Costa Dias, and Eric French (Institute for Fiscal
Studies)
Break
Panel 2: Cognitive Health
• T he Role of Cognitive Decline on Retirement & Disability
Mark Cullen (Stanford/NBER) and Amal Harrati (Stanford University)
• What are the Implications of Late Life Disabilities for Social Security and SSI?
Melissa Favreault (The Urban Institute)
• How Does Cognitive Decline Affect Retirement Policy?
Geoffrey T. Sanzenbacher and Anek Belbase (Boston College)
Box Lunch
Lunchtime Speaker: TBA
Panel 3: New Ways to Insure Adequate Resources for Retirees
• How Home Equity Extraction and Reverse Mortgages Affect the Financial Well-Being of
Senior Households
Stephanie Moulton, Donald Haurin (Ohio State) and Maximilian Schmeiser (Amazon)
• How Might myRA and Mandated Employer Pension Programs Affect Retirement
Savings?
Barbara A. Butrica and Karen E. Smith (The Urban Institute)
• The Total Savings Impact on Automatic Enrollment: Part II
John Beshears, David Laibson, Brigitte Madrian (Harvard University/NBER) and James Choi
(Yale University/NBER)
Break
3:00 – 4:30
Panel 4: Government Finances with an Aging Population
• Adjusting the Payroll Tax to Promote Longer Careers
John Laitner (University of Michigan) and Daniel Silverman (Arizona State University)
• Impacts of Immigration Reform on Social Security: The Earnings of Undocumented
Immigrants
George Borjas (Harvard University/NBER)
• How Would Investing in Equities Have Affected the Social Security Trust Fund?
Gary Burtless (The Brookings Institution), Alicia H. Munnell (Boston College) and
Anthony Webb (The New School for Social Research)
Friday, August 5
8:00 – 8:30 AM
8:30 – 10:00
10:00 – 10:15
10:15 – 11:45
Coffee and Registration
Panel 5: Cohort Changes
• Cohort Changes in Social Security Benefits and Pension Wealth
Chichun Fang, David Weir and Charlie Brown (University of Michigan)
• How Does Student Debt Affect Early-Career Retirement Saving?
Matthew S. Rutledge, Geoffrey T. Sanzenbacher and Francis M. Vitagliano (Boston
College)
• Marital Histories, Gender, and Financial Security in Late Mid-Life: Evidence from Four
Cohorts in the Health and Retirement Study
Amelia Karraker and Cassandra Dorius (Iowa State University)
Break
Panel 6: Household Resources in Old Age
• How Do Family and Social Networks Affect Retirement Behavior of Older Americans?
Gary V. Engelhardt (Syracuse University)
• Longitudinal Analysis of the Determinants of End-of-Life Household Wealth, Part II
James Poterba (MIT/NBER), Steven Venti (Dartmouth College/NBER) and David Wise
(Harvard University/NBER)
• The Interaction of Long-Term Care Insurance Demand and Informal Care Supply
Ami Ko (University of Pennsylvania)
11:45
12:15
Box Lunch
Lunchtime Speaker:
Axel Börsch-Supan
Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy
1:00 – 2:30
2:30
Panel 7: International Comparisons
• Working Conditions and Sustainable Work at Older Ages: An International
Perspective
Jeffrey Wenger, Kathleen Mullen (RAND) and Nicole Maestas (Harvard
University/RAND)
• How does retirement behavior respond to drastic changes in social security rules?
Lessons from the Norwegian 2011 pension reform
Christian Brinch (Norwegian Business School), Ola Vestad (Statistics Norway) and Josef
Zweimueller (University of Zurich)
• Passive Saving over the Life Cycle
Daniel Reck (University of Michigan)
Closing Remarks
The Michigan Retirement Research Center (MRRC), National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Retirement Research Center, and the Center for Retirement Research (CRR) at Boston College all gratefully
acknowledge financial support from the Social Security Administration (SSA) for this meeting. The findings
and conclusions presented are solely those of the authors and do not represent the views of SSA, any
agency of the federal government, the MRRC, NBER Retirement Research Center or CRR.