IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mrr/papers/wp452.html

Work and Retirement of Older Black and Hispanic Adults

Author

Listed:
  • Emma Aguila

    (University of Southern California)

  • Zeewan Lee

    (University of Southern California)

Abstract

Growing U.S. income inequality and the aging of Black and Hispanic populations point to greater risks of financial insecurity for older populations in coming years. Research on retirement determinants for Blacks and Hispanics is limited. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we analyze retirement determinants for Blacks and Hispanics. We link this data to the Working Trajectories file and restricted SSA individual-level files to determine Social Security wealth by race and ethnic origin. Using sociodemographic, health, and economic covariates, we construct a conditional probit model that identifies the probability a given individual will retire from the workforce over time. We find that Hispanics, Blacks, and non-Hispanic whites respond similarly to Social Security, private pension incentives, and other institutional (e.g., health insurance) influences on retirement. In their retirement decisions, non-Hispanic Blacks are not responsive to some sociodemographic characteristics (male, couple, and number of household members), but they are responsive to physical and mental health problems. Hispanics are less responsive than non-Hispanic whites to most sociodemographic characteristics (male, education, and couple) and mental health problems in their retirement decisions. Our findings for non-Hispanic whites are consistent with previous literature. Our research can inform programs and policies to improve the quality of life for older adults, especially those isolated by cultural, economic, educational, or other barriers.

Suggested Citation

  • Emma Aguila & Zeewan Lee, 2022. "Work and Retirement of Older Black and Hispanic Adults," Working Papers wp452, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:mrr:papers:wp452
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mrdrc.isr.umich.edu/publications/papers/pdf/wp452.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Courtney Coile & Jonathan Gruber, 2007. "Future Social Security Entitlements and the Retirement Decision," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(2), pages 234-246, May.
    2. Shoven, John B. & Slavov, Sita Nataraj, 2014. "Does it pay to delay social security?," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(2), pages 121-144, April.
    3. T. Kirk White & Jerome P. Reiter & Amil Petrin, 2018. "Imputation in U.S. Manufacturing Data and Its Implications for Productivity Dispersion," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(3), pages 502-509, July.
    4. Maarten Goos & Alan Manning & Anna Salomons, 2014. "Explaining Job Polarization: Routine-Biased Technological Change and Offshoring," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(8), pages 2509-2526, August.
    5. Leora Friedberg & Anthony Webb, 2005. "Retirement and the Evolution of Pension Structure," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 40(2).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Courtney C. Coile, 2015. "Economic Determinants Of Workers’ Retirement Decisions," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 830-853, September.
    2. Glenzer, Franca & Michaud, Pierre-Carl & Staubli, Stefan, 2025. "Frames, incentives, and education: Effectiveness of interventions to delay public pension claiming," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 248(C).
    3. Papke, Leslie E., 2019. "Retirement choices by state and local public sector employees: the role of eligibility and financial incentives," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(4), pages 515-528, October.
    4. Cory Koedel & Shawn Ni & Michael Podgursky, 2014. "Who Benefits from Pension Enhancements?," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 9(2), pages 165-192, March.
    5. Lee, Zeewan, 2022. "Returning to work: The role of soft skills and automatability on unretirement decisions," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 22(C).
    6. James Marton & Stephen A. Woodbury, 2013. "Retiree Health Benefits as Deferred Compensation," Public Finance Review, , vol. 41(1), pages 64-91, January.
    7. Frank W. Heiland & Na Yin, 2014. "Have We Finally Achieved Actuarial Fairness of Social Security Retirement Benefits and Will It Last?," Working Papers wp307, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    8. Justin Falk & Nadia Karamcheva, 2018. "Comparing the Effects of Current Pay and Defined Benefit Pensions on Employee Retention: Working Paper 2018-06," Working Papers 54056, Congressional Budget Office.
    9. Shawn Ni & Michael Podgursky, 2016. "How Teachers Respond to Pension System Incentives: New Estimates and Policy Applications," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(4), pages 1075-1104.
    10. Ashok Thomas & Luca Spataro, 2016. "The Effects Of Pension Funds On Markets Performance: A Review," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 1-33, February.
    11. Pesner, Matthew, 2024. "Public pensions and retirement: Evidence from the Railroad Retirement Act," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 238(C).
    12. Leora Friedberg & Michael T. Owyang & Wei Sun & Anthony Webb, 2017. "How Do Local Labor Markets Affect Retirement?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 99(3), pages 259-278.
    13. Gopi Shah Goda & Emilie Jackson & Lauren Hersch Nicholas & Sarah See Stith, 2023. "The impact of Covid-19 on older workers’ employment and Social Security spillovers," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(2), pages 813-846, April.
    14. Tommaso AGASISTI & Geraint JOHNES & Marco PACCAGNELLA, 2021. "Tasks, occupations and wages in OECD countries," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 160(1), pages 85-112, March.
    15. Baird, Matthew D. & Engberg, John & Gutierrez, Italo A., 2022. "RCT evidence on differential impact of US job training programmes by pre-training employment status," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    16. Keller, Wolfgang & Utar, Hale, 2023. "International trade and job polarization: Evidence at the worker level," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    17. Rabensteiner, Thomas & Guschanski, Alexander, 2022. "Autonomy and wage divergence: evidence from European survey data," Greenwich Papers in Political Economy 37925, University of Greenwich, Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre.
    18. Jacob Rubæk Holm & Christian Richter Østergaard, 2018. "The high importance of de-industrialization and job polarization for regional diversification," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 1821, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised May 2018.
    19. Fuchsman, Dillon & McGee, Josh B. & Zamarro, Gema, 2023. "Teachers’ willingness to pay for retirement benefits: A national stated preferences experiment," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    20. Michele Cantarella & Chiara Strozzi, 2021. "Workers in the crowd: the labor market impact of the online platform economy [An evaluation of instrumental variable strategies for estimating the effects of catholic schooling]," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 30(6), pages 1429-1458.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mrr:papers:wp452. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MRRC Administrator The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask MRRC Administrator to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isumius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.