August 19, 2021

In the madcap 1960 movie, “Where the Boys Are,” a college student named Tuggle (played by Paula Prentiss) is forthright about why she’s going to Ft. Lauderdale for spring break: to find a husband.

Women have come a long way, and two out of three married women today choose to work, rather than go Tuggle’s presumed route and become a full-time housewife. Yet there’s a 21^st century corollary to Tuggle’s experience. College is important in determining who people marry.

We tend to marry others who are like us, and education has become central to this. College graduates gravitate to other college graduates. People who complete their formal education at high school graduation tend to marry other high school grads. Further, this trend of marrying someone with a similar education is growing over time.

“People are increasingly marrying other individuals with the same level of education,” says Boston College economist Geoffrey Sanzenbacher. Sanzenbacher and other economists say the growing trend of college graduates pairing off with other graduates has increased income inequality.

The importance of college goes much deeper. Among graduates, the specific college one attends is more important in determining who one marries than one’s field of interest or personal attributes like SAT scores or a parent’s income.

For example, graduates of a specific college are very likely to marry someone who went to that same institution – even if they are in different fields, according to a new research study that connected the data in Norway’s centralized college admissions system with marriage data. Or consider two graduates of the same law school. They have a good chance of getting married – not because they are both lawyers but because they attended the same school. …Learn More

June 1, 2021

Many workers in their 60s lose some of their stamina. Either their bodies start showing signs of wear, or they don’t tolerate on-the-job stress like they used to.

People who find themselves in this situation but can’t afford to retire will appreciate the findings in a recent study: older workers who transition to a new job – and perhaps a less demanding one – have greatly improved their retirement finances, even if the new job lacks health and retirement benefits.

The starting point for the analysis was to identify 61- and 62-year-olds employed in career jobs and follow the changes in their retirement finances over time, as they break into three groups. Some retired, some remained in longstanding jobs with benefits, and some found no-benefit jobs, whether with an employer or as an independent contractor.

Matt Rutledge and Gal Wettstein at the Center for Retirement Research compared each group’s retirement prospects in their early 60s with where they ended up years later, after the majority of them had retired. The focus was on the people who, at 62, were falling short of what they would need to retire comfortably.

The financial assessments were based on so-called replacement rates – estimated retirement income as a percentage of employment earnings. The average target required for financial security in old age is about 75 percent of past earnings, though the precise number depends on how much the individual earned.

The researchers estimated replacement rates for the 62-year-olds who fell short of the targets and estimated the rates again when they were 67 or 68. Retirement security improved over time for the under-prepared people who continued to work – in contrast to an erosion in security for the people who, despite falling short, had retired at 62 and locked in a small Social Security check.

The most interesting finding concerned the older workers who had extended their employment by switching to no-benefit jobs. Their retirement income in their late 60s replaced 68 percent of their past earnings, on average – still less than what they need but up dramatically from 52 percent if they had retired early. …Learn More

Behavior

April 20, 2021

U.S. fertility is already at record lows, and women in their 30s have had only 1.3 children on average – well short of their expectations for more than two children.

But they still have time left on their biological clock. So, will they catch up?

Several factors are working specifically against the college graduates in this cohort. Religiously observant people usually have more children, and the decline in religious affiliation is reducing their fertility. Their fertility is also being hurt by the falling marriage rate, which leaves fewer couples ready to raise a family. In addition, the women’s careers often compete with having children.

In a new study, Anqi Chen and Nilufer Gok at the Center for Retirement Research predicted that the final fertility rate for Millennials in their 30s – the rate at the end of their childbearing years – will average 1.96 children.

If this prediction proves accurate, it would get them somewhat closer to what they’d expected and close to the number of children required to replace two parents.

Predicting the final fertility rate for the Millennial women born in the early 1980s required going back in time to analyze the established patterns of a generation that is now past its childbearing years: women born in the second half of the baby boom wave. The researchers applied what they learned about these late boomers and, after adjusting for recent trends, estimated final fertility for today’s 30-somethings.

The 1.96 fertility rate sounds encouraging, but that number applies only to these Millennials. The longer-term prospects suggest fertility may be lower in the future. …Learn More

December 8, 2020

More than half of young adults are now living with their parents – the highest level in more than a century, according to the Pew Research Center.

This alarming statistic, first featured in a September blog, is the result of a long-term trend that has accelerated during the economic slowdown caused by COVID-19.

In this PBS NewsHour video by Catherine Rampell, young adults 24 to 39 years old who are taking refuge in their parents’ homes talked about their stalled social lives and disrupted careers – their disappointments always tinged with a sense of humor.

They include Marcellus Adams, who was laid off from two jobs, as an auto mechanic and emergency room staffer, and, at 29, has never really lived on his own. Eric Rivera moved from the height of chic – an apartment in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn – to his parents’ home in a suburb of Trenton, New Jersey. And comedienne Nikki Glaser’s white-hot career suddenly cooled when her shows were canceled due to the pandemic.

They and millions of Millenials and members of Generation Z may pay a price for their setbacks in the form of lower earnings and unplanned-for career trajectories.

But a vaccine is coming, they are young, and they will persist.

Read our blog posts in our ongoing coverage of COVID-19. …Learn More

Research

October 15, 2020

Self-employed workers who are 50 and older fall into a hierarchy of sorts, a new study finds.

The largest group is the 75 percent who work independently in jobs like freelancer and gig worker. Their average earnings are low – $18,000 a year – and they are more likely to be women or Hispanics.

The other 25 percent of the self-employed older workers are primarily white men and are evenly divided between business owners and managers who work on a contract basis. These individuals tend to be doctors, lawyers, or executives in industries ranging from finance and construction to retail.

To get a better handle on who is choosing self-employment and why, University of Michigan researcher Joelle Abramowitz analyzed 2016 survey data from the Health and Retirement Study. These data included not only older workers’ employment status but also specific information about their employers, industries, and occupations.

The self-employed account for roughly one out of five older workers, but the arrangement is especially popular among boomers over 65 – a third of the workers in this age group are self-employed.

Abramowitz’s research, funded by the U.S. Social Security Administration, finds a lot of diversity in the jobs the self-employed do and in their perceptions of work.

The low-paid independent workers dominate jobs like caregiver, cleaner, farmer, artist, and beauty industry worker. Many view themselves as “retired” and say they would rather not work but apparently need to supplement their retirement income.

In contrast, the owners and managers are far less likely to see themselves as officially retired. Compared with the independent workers, they earn considerably more and are wealthier. The net value of their financial, housing and other wealth exceeds $1 million on average.

Their attitudes are different too. …Learn More

October 6, 2020

Many baby boomers retire the conventional way – by leaving their career jobs. For the others, the first step in retiring involves stopping over in a different job than they’ve held for years.

A sketch of the older workers who transition to post-career jobs – and their reasons for doing so – emerges from a survey of a fairly elite group of mostly college-educated professionals: clients of the Vanguard investment company.

They made the job transitions for a variety of reasons.  More than half of them either had initially retired but decided to go back to work or were forced out of a long-term job by a layoff, firing, or business closure. However, Vanguard’s clients are apparently in good health, because they rarely made changes due to a medical condition.

The boomers usually changed jobs during their 50s. The post-career jobs were often in entirely different occupations or industries, which required the workers to make big trade-offs, according to the 2015 survey, which was designed by Vanguard and several academic researchers.

The old positions were usually full-time, and, as a result, had rigid schedules. Half of the people who found a new job said they now have flexible schedules. But everyone who moved into a post-career job took a 20 percent pay cut, on average, either because they’re working fewer hours or are in a different industry or occupation where the skills honed over the years are not as valued.

There’s also telling evidence that many of the boomers in post-career employment were eager to make this tradeoff. They typically moved from the career job to the new one in about a month, an indication that many had landed the new job prior to leaving the old one. …Learn More

On the Web

December 31, 2019

The articles that our readers gravitated to over the course of this year provide a window into baby boomers’ biggest concerns about retirement.

Judging by the most popular blogs of 2019, they were very interested in the critical decision of when to claim Social Security and whether the money they have saved will be enough to last into old age.

Nearly half of U.S. workers in their 50s could potentially fall short of the income they’ll need to live comfortably in retirement. So people are also reading articles about whether to extend their careers and about other ways they might fill the financial gap.

Here is a list of 10 of our most popular blogs in 2019. Please take a look!

Half of Retirees Afraid to Use Savings

How Long Will Retirement Savings Last?

The Art of Persuasion and Social Security

Social Security: the ‘Break-even’ Debate

Books: Where the Elderly Find Happiness

Second Careers Late in Life Extend Work …Learn More