Principal Investigator: Gary Engelhardt
Active Dates: 2019 – 2020
Funding Source: Boston College/Social Security Administration
Description:
This project fills the bequests and role of housing equity knowledge gap by using rich data from the 1998-2018 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) on health, cognition, functional status, income, wealth, housing, and bequest intentions to examine the role of intended bequests in housing equity and tenure transition decisions, following cohorts of older Americans into old age and eventually death. The PI will estimate the flow of annual intergenerational and inter vivos housing transfers from older Americans to younger generations, examine changes in bequest intentions across birth cohorts, and provide new estimates of the stock of housing wealth held by older Americans that might be available to supplement retirement income if bequest intentions are actualized. The PI will compile and prepare data from a variety of sources for analysis, estimate the flow of annual intergenerational housing transfers from older Americans to younger generations, and analyze the extent to which Social Security income can be supplemented by income from home equity. Deliverable will be a final working paper.