Savings After Retirement: A Survey

Mariacristina De Nardi, Eric French and John Jones

Annual Review of Economics, 2016, vol. 8, issue 1, 177-204

Abstract: The saving patterns of retired US households pose a challenge to the basic life-cycle model of saving. The observed patterns of out-of-pocket medical expenses, which rise quickly with age and income during retirement, and heterogeneous life span risk can explain a significant portion of US saving during retirement. However, more work is needed to distinguish these precautionary saving motives from other motives, such as the desire to leave bequests. Progress toward disentangling these motivations has been made by matching other features of the data, such as public and private insurance choices. An improved understanding of whether intended bequests left to children and spouses are due to altruism, risk sharing, exchange motivations, or a combination of these factors is an important direction for future research.

Keywords: bequests; elderly; housing and portfolio choice; insurance; medical expenditure; policy reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 D31 E21 H31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (56)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-economics-080315-015127 (application/pdf)
Full text downloads are only available to subscribers. Visit the abstract page for more information.

Related works:
Journal Article: Savings after Retirement: A Survey (2016)
Working Paper: Savings After Retirement: A Survey (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:anr:reveco:v:8:y:2016:p:177-204

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.annualreviews.org/action/ecommerce

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Annual Review of Economics from Annual Reviews Annual Reviews 4139 El Camino Way Palo Alto, CA 94306, USA.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by http://www.annualreviews.org ().