Income Security and Financial Wellbeing of Older Workers Transitioning into Retirement

This report begins with a discussion of the literature on income replacement and income security
as older workers transition into retirement. In addition, literature on the financial distress and
financial literacy of elderly households is reviewed. Section III describes our data sources and
dataset construction. Section IV presents descriptive statistics on income replacement of recent
retirees while Section V examines the characteristics of subgroups experiencing large income
changes. Finally, Section VI shows regression analysis of the factors associated with income
changes and studies the link between income changes and financial distress. Appendix A and
Appendix B offers description of our samples of North Carolina public workers and HRS
respondents in greater detail. Appendix C includes tables on sample characteristics and
regression analysis of additional outcomes. Appendix D records the survey questions we use to
create key variables for our North Carolina dataset.