Draft
Household Retirement Savings: Are Spouses Saving Together?
Feb 3, 2017
Improving Financial Decisionmaking
Through our Center for Financial and Economic Decisionmaking (CFED), RAND researchers study how individuals and families make financial decisions and examine how public policy can be leveraged to help improve financial stability.
Improving Financial Decisionmaking Related to Retirement
The decrease in defined benefit pension plans use, coupled with an increase in the life span, is shaping how individuals plan financially for their retirement. CFED researchers investigate how households save for retirement, invest their savings, and spend down their assets in retirement.
Building Financial Health amongst the Economically Vulnerable
CFED researchers design, implement, and evaluate interventions targeted at helping individuals build savings, improve credit, reduce debt, and strengthen financial literacy and capability.
Bringing Together Government Policymakers, Academia, and Industry
The RAND Behavioral Finance Forum is an annual conference and webinar series for federal government, academic, and industry leaders on behavioral finance topics such as retirement security, consumer financial protection, and financial advice.
Featured Research
Recent Publications
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Disparities in Minority Retirement Savings Behavior: Survey and Experimental Evidence from A Nationally-Representative Sample of US Households October 24, 2019
Investigates the main barriers to the accumulation of retirement savings faced by minority groups in the United States.
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Financial Knowledge and Portfolio Complexity in Singapore September 20, 2019
This paper reports the first analysis of older Singaporeans' financial literacy using a unique new dataset, the Singapore Life Panel (SLP®).
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The Effect of Housing Wealth Losses on Spending in the Great Recession September 20, 2019
This article represents the first U.S. study employing exclusively household-level longitudinal data spanning the Great Recession to estimate the response of household spending to negative wealth shocks induced by the sharp declines in house prices.
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Choose Wisely: A Study of College Major Choice and Major Switching Behavior August 31, 2018
This dissertation explores the college major decision-making process, both for initial and subsequent major choices, and analyzes the associations between major choice behaviors and student outcomes such as time to degree and probability of graduation.
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Financial Education among Financially Vulnerable Populations in the United States August 29, 2018
Examines if state-mandated financial education improves debt-related and college-going behaviors among economically vulnerable young adults.
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Many Americans Follow Nontraditional Paths to Retirement: Cognitive Ability and Personality Traits Influence This Process July 30, 2018
Most U.S. seniors follow nonstandard retirement pathways. Seniors with better cognitive ability were more likely to follow nonstandard retirement pathways: In a studied sample, 59.1 percent of those with high cognitive ability had a job after age 65.
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The state of financial knowledge in college: New evidence from a national survey July 16, 2018
Explores gaps in financial knowledge and the overall state of financial literacy of college students.
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Millennial Perceptions of Security: Results from a National Survey of Americans June 14, 2018
This report — part of a series examining critical security challenges in 2040 — uses survey data from a nationally representative sample of adults to examine perceptions of economic and national security and compare attitudes and opinions of millennials with those of previous generations. It concludes by making inferences about potential millennial concerns about security in the year 2040.
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Cognitive Ability, Personality, and Pathways to Retirement: An Exploratory Study April 3, 2018
This paper explores the utility of two prominent psychological variables - cognitive ability and personality - as predictors, while also substantially expanding the detail with which retirement pathways can be characterized.
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Visual Tools and Narratives: New Ways to Improve Financial Literacy October 6, 2017
Our results suggest that educational programs that engage the user emotionally or physically and involve vicarious experience rather than text-based or passive educational programs are key for making gains in both financial literacy and confidence in financial knowledge.
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Subjective Mortality Risk and Bequests October 6, 2017
The results of this paper show a strong empirical relevance of subjective survival curves, indicating the importance to take into consideration of this dimension of individual heterogeneity in life cycle models.
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Managing the Principal Agent Problem in Bolsa Familia: A look at contextual factors that affect the quality of implementation November 2, 2016
Bolsa Familia (BF) is a conditional cash transfer programme in Brazil. This report aims to understand the principal agent problem in BF. Our findings suggest that implementation agencies must have a clear incentive in the programme either through the provision of support to them in the programme or through being held to account. We show that more integration between BF and supporting services is associated with better implementation.