Retirement of the Near Retirement Age Population in the Health and Retirement Study?

This paper uses asset and labor market data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to investigate how the recent "Great Recession " has affected the wealth and retirement of those in the population who were just approaching retirement age at the beginning of the recession, a potentially vulnerable segment of the working age population. The retirement wealth held by those ages 53 to 58 before the onset of the recession in 2006 declined by a relatively modest 2.8 percentage points by 2010. In more normal times, their wealth would have increased over these four years. Members of older cohorts accumulated an additional 5 percent of wealth over the same age span. To be sure, a part of that accumulation was the result of the upside of the housin