TY - JOUR T1 - Do Retirees want Constant, Increasing, or Decreasing Consumption? JF - The Journal of Retirement DO - 10.3905/jor.2023.1.128 SP - jor.2023.1.128 AU - Anqi Chen AU - Alicia H. Munnell Y1 - 2023/01/06 UR - https://pm-research.com/content/early/2023/01/06/jor.2023.1.128.abstract N2 - 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. ER -