PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Anqi Chen
AU  - Alicia H. Munnell
TI  - Do Retirees want Constant, Increasing, or Decreasing Consumption?
AID  - 10.3905/jor.2023.1.128
DP  - 2023 Jan 06
TA  - The Journal of Retirement
PG  - jor.2023.1.128
4099  - https://pm-research.com/content/early/2023/01/06/jor.2023.1.128.short
4100  - https://pm-research.com/content/early/2023/01/06/jor.2023.1.128.full
AB  - Whether households prefer a constant, increasing, or decreasing path of consumption in retirement has important implications for our understanding of retirement adequacy. Financial planners and researchers often have assumed that retirees would like to maintain their pre-retirement standard of living. However, several studies suggest that retired households decrease their consumption over time. This project builds on the existing literature by: 1) examining retirement consumption over longer periods; 2) using wealth to separate constrained and unconstrained households in order to analyze whether declines in consumption are driven by necessity or preferences; and 3) exploring whether, within unconstrained households, those with steeper mortality profiles are more likely to front-load consumption.