Social Security and Elderly Living Arrangements: Evidence from the Social Security Notch

Gary V. Engelhardt, Jonathan Gruber and Cynthia D. Perry

Journal of Human Resources, 2005, vol. 40, issue 2

Abstract: Previous studies of the effect of Social Security on elderly living arrangements generally have relied on data from the distant past or differences in benefits across families or cohorts that potentially were correlated with other determinants of living arrangements. Using data from the 1980–99 Current Population Surveys, we attempt to isolate the causal effect of Social Security on living arrangements with an instrumental-variable approach that relies on the large shifts in benefits for cohorts born from 1910–21, the socalled Social Security notch. Over all elderly households, the estimated elasticity of living with others with respect to Social Security income is -0.4, with elasticities of -1.3 and -1.4 for the widowed and divorced, respectively; most of the effects on living arrangements appear to be concentrated among the lesser educated as well. Our estimated elasticities are substantially larger than those from previous studies and suggest that reductions in current benefits would alter living arrangements significantly.

Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (55)

Downloads: (external link)
http://jhr.uwpress.org/cgi/reprint/XL/2/354
A subscription is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.

Related works:
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:uwp:jhriss:v:40:y:2005:i:2:p354-372

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Human Resources from University of Wisconsin Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().