AN NBER PUBLICATION
ISSUE: No. 3, September 2012
The Bulletin on Aging & Health
People often intend to take beneficial actions, such as reviewing their credit reports or going to the doctor for a check-up, but fail to follow through. The lack of action can be linked to procrastination and memory failures, such as the tendency to process information in a shallow way or to lose information as time passes.
In recent years, numerous studies have established that defaults can have a powerful effect on saving behavior. Relatively less is known about...
Article
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has become the most important cash transfer program for low-income families - in 2010, the EITC reached 26 million families at a total cost of $59 Billion. In the current challenging fiscal climate, social safety net programs such as the EITC are subject to cuts, making it all the more important to understand their effects.
Many past studies have examined the effect of the EITC on labor supply, but relatively few have examined its...
Article
Employment rates of older men vary substantially across developed countries. In 2007, for example, the share of men aged 60-64 who worked ranged from nearly three-quarters in Japan to less than a quarter in France and Belgium. Employment rates have also changed over time within countries, sometimes quite dramatically.
Differences in health may explain some of these differences in employment across countries and over time, as better health may increase the productive...