Married Women's Retirement Expectations: Do Pensions and Social Security Matter?
利用健康与退休调查数据，发现当前已婚女性的退休预期受自身工资、养老金和雇主提供的非工资补偿的强烈影响，而社会保障的影响较弱，且丈夫的退休计划仍起作用。
Twenty-five years ago, married women's retirement decisions were strongly influenced by their husbands' health and retirement status, factors determining the value of women's nonmarket time. In contrast, their own economic opportunity set (wages, Social Security entitlements, and employer pension benefits) appeared to have little effect on their decisions to leave the labor force.' Married women currently forming expectations regarding retirement differ in important ways from this earlier generation. They have spent more time in the labor force, earned higher wages, and accumulated substantial pension rights, both private and public. They also have lower probabilities of remaining married. In 1970, 82 percent of U.S. women aged 45-54 were manried, while 5 percent were divorced. By 1992, only 73 percent were married, while 16 percent were divorced. Thus, husbands' pension and Social Security benefits are less likely to provide economic security in retirement for the current generation of preretirement married women. Their expectations regarding retirement should reflect these changing conditions. Relative to earlier cohorts, married women's retirernent plans should be more strongly influenced by considerations of their own economic returns from continued employment. While of interest for its labor-supply implications, this issue is a matter of public concern because of growing evidence that divorce has wide-ranging consequences for the economic well-being of postretirement women (William H. Crown et al., 1993). Findings from the new Health and Retirement Survey indicate that older married women's expectations of working after age 62 are strongly influenced by their expected wage, nonwage compensation such as employer-provided health and disability insurance, and pension income. Expected Social Security entitlements also appear important, although the evidence for their effect is weaker. Like the earlier generation, wives are also influenced by their husbands' plans, suggesting a tendency toward joint retirement.