Recent trends in wealth inequality among older Americans in two surveys

We document changes in wealth inequality across American households with a member aged 55 or older, comparing data in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) with that in the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) between 1998 and 2016. We examine net wealth including housing, financial and nonfinancial assets and debt, without the cash value of insurances, DB pensions or Social Security wealth. We find very similar distributions of net wealth in the two surveys between the 25th and 90th percentiles, but substantially higher wealth in the SCF at the top of the distribution. Both surveys show an increase in wealth inequality between 1998 and 2016, first mostly due to increased wealth at the top, and, after 2012, due to an increase in the share of households with very little wealth as well. Both surveys agree that wealth inequality by education and race, already substantial in 1998, increased further by 2016.

Taxes and the revaluation of household wealth

I compare pre-tax and post-tax wealth levels and trends after netting out implicit taxes on tax-deferred assets and accrued capital gains. The analysis covers 1983–2016 for net worth (NW) and augmented wealth (AW), which includes pension and Social Security wealth. Netting out implicit taxes substantially reduces growth in mean and median NW and AW. However, the upward trajectory in NW and AW inequality is basically unchanged from using post-tax values. I also introduce bequest wealth, the value of the estate including death benefits. It is notably more equal than NW and has grown faster over time.

What do we learn about redistribution effects of pension systems from internationally comparable measures of Social Security wealth?

We present novel estimates of Social Security Wealth (SSW) at the individual level based on the SHARE survey. Our estimates are based on a rigorous methodology taking into account country-specific legislations, the earning history and the longevity prospects of individuals. The key advantage over existing estimates is that our measures of SSW are fully comparable across countries. This allows us to construct indexes of the redistribution enacted by the pension systems in Europe. Finally, we provide descriptive evidence of the relationship between SSW and private wealth.

The effectiveness of incentives to postpone retirement: evidence from Italy

This paper investigates whether financial incentives may be used as an effective device to induce workers to postpone retirement by evaluating the Italian so-called ‘super-bonus’ reform. The bonus consisted of economic incentives given for a limited period to private sector workers who had reached the requirements for seniority pension but who chose to postpone retirement. Using data from the Bank of Italy Survey on Household Income and Wealth, this paper assesses the effect of the bonus on the decision to postpone retirement, by comparing private and public workers before and after the reform. Results suggest a 30% reduction in seniority retirement probability, despite the fact that, when changes in social security wealth are taken into account, the bonus actually provided a negative incentive for most workers. Results also suggest that the effect of the reform was driven by low-income workers. Some evidence is presented showing that liquidity constraints and financial (il)literacy may help to interpret these results.

Self-employment in Italy: the role of Social Security Wealth

Using a rich micro dataset drawn from administrative archives, we explore whether Social Security Wealth (SSW) is an important factor affecting the decision to become self-employed. We focus on the two main categories of self-employed professions covered by the Italian public pension system: craftsmen and shopkeepers. We use the large exogenous variation in individual expected SSW that occurred as a result of the policy reform process undertaken in Italy during the 1990s to identify the effect of this variable and we study how the probability of being self-employed or employed depends, amongst other things, on the difference in the expected SSW that accrues under the two alternative employment scenarios. Our key finding is that a higher difference in expected SSW from self-employment compared with employment has a positive effect on the probability of being self-employed and on the probability of switching to self-employment, whereas it has a negative effect on the probability of switching from self-employment to employment.