%0 Report %D 2022 %T Cognitive Decline, Limited Awareness, Imperfect Agency, and Financial Well-being %A Ameriks, John %A Caplin, Andrew %A Lee, Minjoon %A Matthew D. Shapiro %A Tonetti, Christopher %K Cognitive decline %K Financial well-being %X Cognitive decline may lead older Americans to make poor financial decisions. Preventing poor decisions may require timely transfer of financial control to a reliable agent. Cognitive decline, however, can develop unnoticed, creating the possibility of suboptimal timing of the transfer of control. This paper presents survey-based evidence that wealthholders regard suboptimal timing of the transfer of control, in particular delay due to unnoticed cognitive decline, as a substantial risk to financial well-being. This paper provides a theoretical framework to model such a lack of awareness and the resulting welfare loss. %B Working Paper %I National Bureau of Economic Research %C Cambridge, MA %G eng %R 10.3386/w29634 %0 Report %D 2016 %T Late-in-Life Risks and the Under-Insurance Puzzle %A Ameriks, John %A Briggs, Joseph S. %A Caplin, Andrew %A Matthew D. Shapiro %A Tonetti, Christopher %K Affordable Care Act %K Health Insurance %K Health Shocks %K Medicare/Medicaid/Health Insurance %K Older Adults %K Risk Factors %K Social Security %X Individuals face significant late-in-life risks, including needing long-term care (LTC). Yet, they hold little long-term care insurance (LTCI). Using both "strategic survey questions," which identify preferences, and stated demand questions, this paper investigates the degree to which a fundamental lack of interest and poor product features determine low LTCI holdings. It estimates a rich set of individual-level preferences and uses a life-cycle model to predict insurance demand, finding that better insurance would be far more widely held than are products in the market. Comparing stated and model-predicted demand shows that flaws in existing products provide a significant, but partial, explanation for this under-insurance puzzle. %B NBER Working Paper Series %I National Bureau of Economic Research %C Cambridge, MA %P 1-62 %8 10/2016 %G eng %U http://www.nber.org/papers/w22726.pdf %R 10.3386/w22726 %0 Generic %D 2016 %T New Methods for Measuring Retirement wealth in the HRS %A Caplin, Andrew %K Retirement %K Wealth %I National Institute on Aging %C Bethesda, MD %0 Report %D 2015 %T The Wealth of Wealthholders %A Ameriks, John %A Caplin, Andrew %A Lee, Minjoon %A Matthew D. Shapiro %A Tonetti, Christopher %K Adult children %K Consumption and Savings %K Employment and Labor Force %K Event History/Life Cycle %K Net Worth and Assets %K Public Policy %K Women and Minorities %X This paper introduces the Vanguard Research Initiative (VRI), a new panel survey of wealthholders designed to yield high-quality measurements of a large sample of older Americans who arrive at retirement with significant financial assets. The VRI links survey data with a variety of administrative data from Vanguard. The survey features an account-by-account approach to asset measurement and a real-time feedback and correction mechanism that are shown to be highly successful in eliciting accurate measures of wealth. Specifically, the VRI data reflect unbiased and precise estimates of wealth when compared to administrative account data. The VRI sample has characteristics similar to populations meeting analogous wealth and Internet access eligibility conditions in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). To illustrate the value of the VRI, the paper shows that the relationship between wealth and expected retirement date is very different in the VRI than in the HRS and SCF--mainly because those surveys have so few observations where wealth levels are high enough to finance substantial consumption during retirement. %I Cambridge, United States, NBER Working Paper No. 20972 %G eng %U http://search.proquest.com/docview/1687935318/1B5FA0446C27487FPQ/32 %4 Consumption/Saving/Wealth/Fiscal Policy/Fiscal Policy/Public Policy/transfers/Household economics/Intertemporal Household Choice/Life Cycle Models/Economics of the Elderly/Economics of the Handicapped/Non-labor Market Discrimination %$ 999999