@article {5867,
	title = {What Determines End-of-Life Assets? A Retrospective View},
	year = {2015},
	abstract = {We consider assets when individuals were last observed prior to death in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and trace assets backwards to the age when these individuals were first observed. For most individuals, assets in the last year observed (LYO) were very similar to assets in the first year observed (FYO). In particular, most of those who were last observed with very low asset levels also had low assets when first observed. We also estimate the relationship between an individual{\textquoteright}s asset change between the first and last date of observation, that individual{\textquoteright}s education and health status when first observed, and that individual{\textquoteright}s within-sample changes in health and family composition. We obtain estimates for HRS respondents who were 51 to 61 in 1992 and for AHEAD respondents who were age 70 and over in 1993.},
	keywords = {Consumption and Savings, Employment and Labor Force, Net Worth and Assets, Women and Minorities},
	author = {James M. Poterba and Steven F Venti and David A Wise}
}
@article {5925,
	title = {Were They Prepared for Retirement? Financial Status at Advanced Ages in the HRS and AHEAD Cohorts},
	year = {2012},
	note = {National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, NBER Working Papers: 17824, 2012 0898-2937 Working Paper},
	institution = {National Bureau of Economic Research},
	abstract = {Many analysts have considered whether households approaching retirement age have accumulated enough assets to be well prepared for retirement. In this paper, we shift from studying household finances at the start of the retirement period, an ex ante measure of retirement preparation, to studying the asset holdings of households in their last years of life. The analysis is based on Health and Retirement Study with special attention to Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old (AHEAD) cohort that was first surveyed in 1993. We consider the level of assets that households hold in the last survey wave preceding their death. We study how assets at the end of life depend on three family status pathways prior to death--(1) original one-person households in 1993, (2) persons in two-person household in 1993 with a deceased spouse in the last year observed, and (3) persons in two-person households in 1993 with the spouse alive when last observed. We find that a substantial fraction of persons die with virtually no financial assets--46.1 percent with less than  10,000--and many of these households also have no housing wealth and rely almost entirely on Social Security benefits for support. In addition this group is disproportionately in poor health. Based on a replacement rate comparison, many of these households may be deemed to have been well-prepared for retirement, in the sense that their income in their final years was not substantially lower than their income in their late 50s or early 60s. Yet with such low asset levels, they would have little capacity to pay for unanticipated needs such as health expenses or other financial shocks or to pay for entertainment, travel, or other activities. This raises a question of whether the replacement ratio is a sufficient statistic for the  adequacy  of retirement preparation.},
	keywords = {Consumption and Savings, Employment and Labor Force, Event History/Life Cycle, Net Worth and Assets, Women and Minorities},
	url = {URL:http://www.nber.org/papers/w17824.pdf  URL},
	author = {James M. Poterba and Steven F Venti and David A Wise}
}
