Joint Retirement Decisions between Husbands and Wives

Abstract

This thesis uses data obtained from the Rand Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine whether husbands and wives will decide to retire jointly or separately. This paper uses the new data from 1992 to 2006 to show the current prevailing retirement patterns of older couples and estimates a joint retirement function to find out factors that would affect the retirement decisions. This thesis shows 24.29% of couples with each spouse having career jobs prefer retiring jointly. Besides this paper finds both wives’ earnings before retirement and husbands’ incomes after retirement have negative effects on the decision to jointly retire, while wives’ retirement incomes have positive effects.