IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ran/wpaper/wr-782.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Individuals' Uncertainty about Future Social Security Benefits and Portfolio Choice

Author

Listed:
  • Adeline Delavande
  • Susann Rohwedder

Abstract

Little is known about the degree to which individuals are uncertain about their future Social Security benefits, how this varies within the U.S. population, and whether this uncertainty influences financial decisions related to retirement planning. To illuminate these issues, the authors present empirical evidence from the Health and Retirement Study Internet Survey and document systematic variation in respondents' uncertainty about their future Social Security benefits by individual characteristics. They find that respondents with higher levels of uncertainty about future benefits hold a smaller share of their wealth in stocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Adeline Delavande & Susann Rohwedder, 2010. "Individuals' Uncertainty about Future Social Security Benefits and Portfolio Choice," Working Papers WR-782, RAND Corporation.
  • Handle: RePEc:ran:wpaper:wr-782
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/2010/RAND_WR782.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bottazzi, Renata & Jappelli, Tullio & Padula, Mario, 2006. "Retirement expectations, pension reforms, and their impact on private wealth accumulation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(12), pages 2187-2212, December.
    2. Engelberg, Joseph & Manski, Charles F. & Williams, Jared, 2009. "Comparing the Point Predictions and Subjective Probability Distributions of Professional Forecasters," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27, pages 30-41.
    3. Renata Bottazzi & Tullio Jappelli & Mario Padula, 2009. "The Portfolio Effect of Pension Reforms," Working Papers 2009_17, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    4. Annamaria Lusardi & Olivia S Mitchelli, 2007. "Financial Literacy and Retirement Preparedness: Evidence and Implications for Financial Education," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 42(1), pages 35-44, January.
    5. Bernheim, B Douglas & Levin, Lawrence, 1989. "Social Security and Personal Saving: An Analysis of Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 97-102, May.
    6. Bodie, Zvi & Merton, Robert C. & Samuelson, William F., 1992. "Labor supply flexibility and portfolio choice in a life cycle model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 16(3-4), pages 427-449.
    7. Guiso, Luigi & Jappelli, Tullio, 2000. "Household Portfolios in Italy," CEPR Discussion Papers 2549, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Annamaria Lusardi & Olivia Mitchell, 2006. "Financial Literacy and Retirement Preparedness: Evidence and Implications for Financial Education Programs," Working Papers wp144, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    9. Adeline Delavande & Susann Rohwedder, 2008. "Eliciting Subjective Expectations in Internet Surveys," Working Papers 589, RAND Corporation.
    10. Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli & Mario Padula, 2009. "Pension Risk, Retirement Saving and Insurance," CSEF Working Papers 223, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    11. Adeline Delavande & Susann Rohwedder, 2008. "Eliciting Subjective Expectations in Internet Surveys," Working Papers WR-589, RAND Corporation.
    12. Jeff Dominitz & Charles F. Manski, 2006. "Measuring Pension‐benefit Expectations Probabilistically," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 20(2), pages 201-236, June.
    13. Zvi Bodie & William Samuelson, 1989. "Labor Supply Flexibility and Portfolio Choice," NBER Working Papers 3043, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Adeline Delavande & Susann Rohwedder, 2011. "Individuals' uncertainty about future social security benefits and portfolio choice," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(3), pages 498-519, April.
    2. Jeffrey B. Liebman & Erzo F. P. Luttmer, 2012. "The Perception of Social Security Incentives for Labor Supply and Retirement: The Median Voter Knows More Than You'd Think," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(1), pages 1-42.
    3. Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli & Mario Padula, 2009. "Pension Risk, Retirement Saving and Insurance," CSEF Working Papers 223, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    4. Jeffrey B. Liebman & Erzo F. P. Luttmer, 2015. "Would People Behave Differently If They Better Understood Social Security? Evidence from a Field Experiment," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 275-299, February.
    5. Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli & Mario Padula, 2013. "Pension Wealth Uncertainty," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 80(4), pages 1057-1085, December.
    6. van Santen, Peter & Alessie, Rob & Kalwij, Adriaan, 2012. "Probabilistic survey questions and incorrect answers: Retirement income replacement rates," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 267-280.
    7. Alserda, Gosse A.G. & Dellaert, Benedict G.C. & Swinkels, Laurens & van der Lecq, Fieke S.G., 2019. "Individual pension risk preference elicitation and collective asset allocation with heterogeneity," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 206-225.
    8. Olivier Armantier & Wändi Bruine de Bruin & Giorgio Topa & Wilbert van der Klaauw & Basit Zafar, 2015. "Inflation Expectations And Behavior: Do Survey Respondents Act On Their Beliefs?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56(2), pages 505-536, May.
    9. Timmermans, S. & Schumacher, J.M. & Ponds, E.H.M., 2011. "A Cohort-Specific Approach to Retirement Savings," Other publications TiSEM 9f3040ab-8dd3-4eeb-b45a-6, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. van Rooij, Maarten & Lusardi, Annamaria & Alessie, Rob, 2011. "Financial literacy and stock market participation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 449-472, August.
    11. Erzo F. P. Luttmer & Andrew A. Samwick, 2018. "The Welfare Cost of Perceived Policy Uncertainty: Evidence from Social Security," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(2), pages 275-307, February.
    12. Armantier, Olivier & Filippin, Antonio & Neubauer, Michael & Nunziata, Luca, 2022. "The expected price of keeping up with the Joneses," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1203-1220.
    13. Fang, H., 2016. "Insurance Markets for the Elderly," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 237-309, Elsevier.
    14. John Y. Campbell, 2006. "Household Finance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1553-1604, August.
    15. Hugo Benítez-Silva, 2003. "Labor Supply Flexibility and Portfolio Choice: An Empirical Analysis," Working Papers wp056, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    16. Clayton Arlen Looney & Andrew M. Hardin, 2009. "Decision Support for Retirement Portfolio Management: Overcoming Myopic Loss Aversion via Technology Design," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(10), pages 1688-1703, October.
    17. Bissonnette, L. & van Soest, A.H.O., 2010. "Retirement Expectations, Preferences, and Decisions," Other publications TiSEM 45e93b08-cc1d-47c6-ba06-d, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    18. Yoshihiko Kadoya & Mostafa Saidur Rahim Khan, 2018. "Can financial literacy reduce anxiety about life in old age?," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(12), pages 1533-1550, December.
    19. Annamaria Lusardi & Olivia S. Mitchell, 2008. "Planning and Financial Literacy: How Do Women Fare?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 413-417, May.
    20. Goda, Gopi Shah & Manchester, Colleen Flaherty & Sojourner, Aaron J., 2014. "What will my account really be worth? Experimental evidence on how retirement income projections affect saving," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 80-92.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    expectations; portfolio choice; subjective probabilities; uncertatinty; Health and Retirement Study;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ran:wpaper:wr-782. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Benson Wong (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lpranus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.