Rather, it is important to know: 1) how long individuals in different SES groups have to work to maintain their pre-retirement standard of living; 2) how long they plan to work; and 3) what explains any gap between the two.
This brief, based on an earlier paper, uses the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to document the disparities across SES quartiles both in the ages at which households will meet their retirement income targets and in their planned retirement ages.1 It then uses regression analysis to determine the extent to which any gap between the target and planned ages is associated with SES, as opposed to demographic/financial characteristics or health, marital, wealth, or employment shocks that occur before the HRS interview but too late for the household to adjust its saving (between ages 50-58). The analysis uses education as the SES metric, because educational attainment is determined early in life and affects, but is unaffected by, the focus of this research – late-career labor market activity.