MyMoney Resources - Researcher

Abstract: Participants in 401(k) plans are more likely than other workers to list "retirement" as their main reason for saving, to hold individual retirement accounts and to invest in the stock market. There are two possible reasons for these differences: (1) workers who like to save choose to participate in the program; or (2) 401(k) participation educates workers about investing. I disentangle these explanations using the 1983-1989 Survey of Consumer Finances. I find that 401(k) participants have a greater interest in saving for retirement than other workers, suggesting that extrapolating from their saving behavior to that of the workforce at large could be misleading. 401(k) participation also appears to increase awareness of retirement saving, but the gains are largest among workers who already prioritize retirement saving.

Abstract: Despite the long economic expansion, employment among young men is lower today than it was in the late 1960s. This decline has been largely driven by a 17 percentage point reduction in the proportion of high school dropouts working even a single week per year. One common explanation for this trend, declining real wages, ignores the fact that the value of working today depends on future returns to experience. This paper estimates a model of labor supply with returns to experience as an explanatory variable, using data from the Current Population Survey. The classic myopic labor supply model (in which only the current wage matters) is rejected in favor of one that includes forward-looking considerations, embodied in returns to experience. For high school dropouts, decreasing returns to experience explain 30 percent of the decline in participation between 1967 and 1977. Changes in wages do not explain any of this trend.

Abstract: The issue of whether higher lifetime income households save a larger fraction of their income is an important factor in the evaluation of tax and macroeconomic policy. Despite an outpouring of research on this topic in the 1950s and 1960s, the question remains unresolved and has since received little attention. This paper revisits the issue, using new empirical methods and the Panel Study on Income Dynamics, the Survey of Consumer Finances, and the Consumer Expenditure Survey. We first consider the various ways in which life cycle models can be altered to generate differences in saving rates by income groups: differences in Social Security benefits, different time preference rates, non-homothetic preferences, bequest motives, uncertainty, and consumption floors. Using a variety of instruments for lifetime income, we find a strong positive relationship between personal saving rates and lifetime income. The data do not support theories relying on time preference rates, non-homothetic preferences, or variations in Social Security benefits. Instead, the evidence is consistent with models in which precautionary saving and bequest motives drive variations in saving rates across income groups. Finally, we illustrate how models that assume a constant rate of saving across income groups can yield erroneous predictions.

This paper uses the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances to identify the factors that determine whether an eligible employee elects to participate in a 401(k) plan and the magnitude of the employee’s contribution. The conclusion is that the most important factor affecting employees’ participation and contribution decisions is their planning horizon. Those with planning periods of less than two years are much less likely to provide for retirement than those who have a more long-term perspective. These results are consistent with other studies suggesting that employee education can have a major impact on retirement saving. On the plan side, the most important determinants are the availability of an employer match and the ability of employees to gain access to their funds before retirement through withdrawal or borrowing. In short, good information about the need for retirement saving and good plan design can significantly increase participation and contributions. The question is whether employers have the incentive to make this effort under the new safe harbor nondiscrimination provisions.

Abstract: Homeownership among U.S. families increased notably in recent years, from 63.9% in 1989 to 66.2% in 1998. This paper examines this trend and the factors contributing to it. We find that (1) homeownership has risen for all racial, ethnic, and income groups, (2) the differences in homeownership between minority and non-minority families and between middle- income and lower-income families declined significantly, and (3) changes in family-related characteristics explain homeownership trends among only the top two income quintiles. Among the lower two income quintiles, family-related characteristics explain almost none of the increase in homeownership. This pattern of results suggests that changes in mortgage and housing markets and changes in the regulations that govern those markets, such as CRA and HMDA, account for the increase in homeownership among lower-income families.