Search

This study proposed that human capital, health capital, attitudes toward finances, and the relative bargaining power of the spouse would influence the ownership and the amount of a person's retirement assets and the ownership and amount in stocks within the retirement assets. Using data from couples in the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances, the results of logistic regressions and ordinary least squares regressions showed some support for each theory. The household heads who had more education, those who were in better health, and those who would take more risk when saving and investing were more likely to own some retirement assets and they had more in retirement assets. In regard to spousal influence, there was support for the bargaining power model but not for the shared resources model. As the spouse's level of education increased, the household head was more likely to own retirement assets and there was more in the retirement assets. The working status of the spouse and whether the spouse was more financially knowledgeable had a negative influence on retirement assets and the amount in assets. However, the amount of variance that was explained by the spousal variables was small; therefore, the results regarding the spouse's influence should be viewed with caution.

This study incorporated intrinsic rewards of work, future time perspective and perspective on the economy in the future to create a model for the psychological mechanism of planning for retirement. The data set included those who were not retired (N = 2,266) in the 1992 Health and Retirement Study. Confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modeling were used. The analyses were conducted separately on the different types of retirement plans. The results suggest that human resource professionals should (1) encourage employees who perceive high intrinsic rewards of work to plan for their retirement, and (2) remind employees that retirement might be closer than they anticipate. ********** The concept of retirement developed following the Industrial Revolution; now retirement is widely accepted. Currently, the time individuals spend in school or pre-work training has increased due to the complexity and demands of work. At the same time, the number of years spent in retirement is increasing because of advances in medical services. As a result, individuals have relatively less time during their work life to save for their retirement years (Dalton 2008). Therefore, the importance of retirement planning has greatly increased but there appears to be a lack of planning for retirement. About 40% of workers in their 50s reported that they did not have a plan for retirement or they had not thought much about it (Ekerdt, DeViney, and Kosloski 1996, 160). About 60% of older self-employed workers did not have a retirement plan (DeVaney and Kim 2003). Only 13% of workers interviewed for the 2009 Retirement Confidence Survey reported being "very confident" about having enough money for retirement. This was the lowest rate since the survey asked this question in 1993 (Helman et al. 2009). The relationship between retirement and poverty has been explored (Holden, Burkhauser, and Feaster 1988). By using the Retirement History Study, they found that the initial decline into poverty for older couples was linked to the event of the husband's retirement. This result showed that when the household lost the husband's regular income, they were financially vulnerable if they had not saved in advance of retirement. Based on twenty-five waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Rank and Hirschl (1999) found that 40% of America's elderly population will encounter a year below the poverty line between ages sixty and ninety. The relationship between retirement and poverty was also mentioned in Reducing Poverty in Older Women (Townson 2000); the study suggested that women were more likely than men to face financial difficulties after retirement. Besides those who were near the poverty line, Mitchell and Moore (1998) concluded that a married couple about 55 years old with $400,000 assets would still need to engage in substantial savings in order to retire comfortably. If the pre-retirees were not saving enough to enable them to retire, they were likely to face financial difficulty in retirement years. For those who are less fortunate and below the poverty level, the government would need to devote resources to them to ensure their welfare. According to Christine Weller of the Economic Policy Institute, the average American household does not hold adequate retirement savings (Dugas 2002). Munnell, Webb, and Delorme (2006) stated that more than 40% of American households are "at risk" of declines in retirement income. Factors associated with planning for retirement have been investigated by many researchers (i.e., Adams and Beehr 1998; Beehr et al. 2000; Ekerdt and DeViney 1993; Ekerdt et al. 2001; Kim and DeVaney 2005). The primary focus of these studies has been financial preparation for retirement. Recently, researchers have considered the psychological aspects of retirement planning. The concept of future time perspective has been addressed in several studies (Hershey et al. 2007; Hershey and Mowen 2000; Jacobs-Lawson and Hershey 2005). …

A growing number of studies in life course epidemiology and biodemography make use of a retrospective question tapping self-rated childhood health to assess overall physical health status. Analyzing repeated measures of self-rated childhood health from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), this study examines several possible explanations for why respondents might change their ratings of childhood health. Results reveal that nearly one-half of the sample revised their rating of childhood health during the 10-year observation period. Whites and relatively advantaged older adults—those with more socioeconomic resources and better memory—were less likely to revise their rating of childhood health, while those who experienced multiple childhood health problems were more likely to revise their childhood health rating, either positively or negatively. Changes in current self-rated health and several incident physical health problems were also related to the revision of one’s rating of childhood health, while the development of psychological disorders was associated with more negative revised ratings. We then illustrate the impact that these changes may have on an adult outcomes: namely, depressive symptoms. Whereas adult ratings of childhood health are likely to change over time, we recommend their use only if adjusting for factors associated with these changes, such as memory, psychological disorder, adult self-rated health, and socioeconomic resources.