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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Economic Policy

Syracuse University

2001

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Have 401(K)S Raised Household Savings? Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, Gary V. Engelhart Jun 2001

Have 401(K)S Raised Household Savings? Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, Gary V. Engelhart

Center for Policy Research

The most popular tax subsidy to household saving in the United States is the 401(k)-type pension arrangement, which subsidizes saving through income-tax deferral on wages and salary dedicated to retirement saving and through investment accrual at the pre-tax interest rate. Although enabled by legislation in 1978, 401(k) plans effectively were not adopted until the Internal Revenue Service issued clarifying rules in 1981. Since then, they have grown remarkably and become the primary vehicle for retirement saving. In 1996, 33 percent of all private pension assets, 33 percent of all pension plans, and 45 percent of all active pension participants were …


Pre-Retirement Lump-Sum Pension Distributions And Retirement Income Security: Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, Gary V. Engelhart Jun 2001

Pre-Retirement Lump-Sum Pension Distributions And Retirement Income Security: Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, Gary V. Engelhart

Center for Policy Research

This paper uses data from the 1992 and 1998 Waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine the extent of retirement wealth erosion from pre-retirement lump-sum distributions. There is little evidence that spent distributions have resulted in significant pension leakage. If spent distributions had been rolled over into a tax-qualified plan instead, they would have represented in present value between 5 and 11 percent of pension and Social Security wealth for the median household that spent a distribution. However, one-quarter of the households that spent distributions—which is 2.25 percent of all households age 51 to 61—could have increased …


The Role Of Microsimulation In Longitudinal Data Analysis, Douglas A. Wolf Feb 2001

The Role Of Microsimulation In Longitudinal Data Analysis, Douglas A. Wolf

Center for Policy Research

The term “microsimulation” has been linked to a range of tools and techniques that are finding growing use in empirical social science applications. This paper considers one such area, namely the potential for microsimulation to serve the needs of the data analyst, in contrast to the more common use of microsimulation by the model user. Furthermore, the focus is on longitudinal rather than cross-sectional data analysis. The paper identifies several types of longitudinal data modeling approaches in which microsimulation is particularly relevant, suggesting algorithms with which to conduct such microsimulations. Microsimulation can be used to extend the range of inferences …