Why are U.S. Households Claiming Social Security Later?

Probabilistic Thinking and Social Security Claiming

This study analyzes the extent to which an individual’s survival expectations influence his or her decision to claim social security benefits at an early age. We find that subjective survival probabilities capture meaningful behavioral responses to incentives for early Social Security claiming when they are purged of measurement error using risk factors as instruments. Among people who are stil...

Probabilistic Thinking and Early Social Security Claiming

Framing and Claiming: How Information-Framing Affects Expected Social Security Claiming Behavior.

This paper provides evidence that Social Security benefit claiming decisions are strongly affected by framing and are thus inconsistent with expected utility theory. Using a randomized experiment that controls for both observable and unobservable differences across individuals, we find that the use of a "breakeven analysis" encourages early claiming. Respondents are more likely to delay when la...

Why Pay for Social Security ?

With regard to the legitimacy of welfare empirical evidence tends to defy pessimistic theories. Here this puzzling contradiction between facts and theory is seen as a result of insufficient understanding of people's motivations to support welfare. For improving such understanding an empirical instrument is developed and applied for measuring directly the various motivations people may have to p...

Why Are Saving Rates of Urban Households in China Rising?

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