A Review of Existing Measures of Retirement Well-being

Anqi Chen and Gal Wettstein

Issues in Brief from Center for Retirement Research

Abstract: The brief’s key findings are:(1)While financial readiness measures suggest many could fall short in retirement, most retirees say they are satisfied with their lives.(2)To explore this disconnect, the analysis reviews existing measures of objective and subjective well-being across many datasets.(3)The results show that the objective measures – such as health and income – are generally poor predictors of reported satisfaction. (4)This finding suggests that survey responses on satisfaction provide little help to policymakers concerned with financial security.(5)Thus, new ways to capture well-being could focus on whether retirees need to cut spending and how they respond to emergencies and expense shocks.

Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2025-03
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crr:issbrf:ib2025-6

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