Themes in the Economics of Aging

In the past few years, the economic ramifications of aging have garnered close attention from a group of NBER researchers led by David A. Wise. In this volume, Wise and his collaborators continue to analyze a nexus of age-related issues. This volume begins by looking at the implications of private and public personal retirement plans, focusing in particular on the impact of 401(k) programs on retirement strategies in light of potential social security reform and factors such as annuitization and on asset accumulation. Next, the often-observed relationship between health and wealth is dissected from two different perspectives and correlated with striking increases in health-care spending over the past two decades, despite the improved health of older populations. The volume concludes with an investigation of the retirement effects of various social security provisions in both U.S. and German systems. This carefully developed collection expands the current investigative focus and broadens the dialogue on a rapidly growing area of social and economic concern.

David A. Wise is the director of the National Bureau of Economic Research's program on aging and the John F. Stambaugh Professor of Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is the editor or coeditor of more than a dozen books, all published by the University of Chicago Press.