Seminar Series: Occupations and Work at Older Ages

Lindsay Jacobs is an Assistant Professor of Public Affairs at UW–Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs. She specializes in labor economics, with an emphasis on older populations. Her current research projects look at retirement preparedness and modeling the interactions among health, job tasks, and labor supply decisions.

Jacobs’ talk is titled “Occupations and Work at Older Ages: Varied Responses to Policy.” Increases in life expectancy over the past century coupled with the “pay-as-you-go” design of Social Security old-age benefits have led to the program facing projected deficits. Social Security claiming ages have increased from age 65 to 67 in the recent past, and further increases are one conceivable approach towards ensuring the program’s continued solvency. While not a consideration in current policy design, there are many notable patterns across occupations in retirement, disability, and saving behavior that mean such policy changes will be responded to differently by people in different occupations. In this paper, Jacobs takes a life-cycle perspective to estimate a number of effects that would occur with increases in Social Security claiming ages across people in blue- and white-collar occupations, broadly defined, and offer proposals for a more occupation-neutral Social Security policy design.

The La Follette School Seminar Series engages participants in discussion of a range of public policy issues and showcases the research of faculty from the La Follette School, other UW–Madison departments, and outside the UW–Madison community. Faculty, students, and visitors take part in lively dialogue about topics such as poverty and welfare, health, education, international affairs, trade and finance, and the environment. For more information, email Professor Tim Smeeding.