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Pension and housing wealth fell substantially during the Great Recession in many industrialized countries. This raised questions about the development of retirement savings adequacy. Using a unique combination of survey and administrative panel data from before and after the Great Recession in the Netherlands, we investigate co-movements between wealth and retirement expenditure goals. We separate ‘pure’ wealth effects from macro factors such as general pessimism. The estimates show that a shock in annuitized pension wealth of 100 euros reduced retirement expenditure goals with 23-33 euros. Whereas pensions drive the revision of goals for older indi- viduals, the results indicate that individuals between the ages of 25 and 49 are more sensitive to housing wealth. Furthermore, while other studies find that the reaction of current consumption to financial shocks is relatively strong for low-income households, we document that long term expenditure goals are adjusted more by high-income households. Simulations show that the fraction of individuals falling short with regard to their own retirement expenditure goal would almost have doubled during the Great Recession if individuals would not have adjusted their retirement expenditure goals downward.

One of the aims of social insurance programs is to provide a financial safety net to households when encountering adverse circumstances. However, apart from offering mere protection, a system of social insurance can also be designed with the aim to increase overall welfare. In order to make the appropriate design decisions one needs to understand how individuals react to both negative shocks, such as health and wealth shocks, and the system put in place to protect them from these shocks. To gain understanding on such behavioral effects, access to high quality microdata is crucial. This thesis contains four essays aiming to generate empirical insights to facilitate the design of social insurance program. It focusses on changes in consumption preferences in reaction to health and wealth shocks, the effectivity of complementary efforts to sickness benefits programs, and methods to construct the surveys needed to gain these empirical insights.

Long-term trends, such as the aging of the population, the increased life-expectancy, and the consequences of the recent financial crisis, have raised concerns about the sustainability of pension systems. Consequently, many OECD countries have proposed and implemented reforms to alleviate the pension system from the pressure of demographic aging and to create sustainable pension systems for the future. Many of the reforms implemented are related to increasing both the statutory and effective retirement age, making pension benefits less generous and increasing contributions. As a consequence, the proposed and implemented reforms have raised a lot of discussion about the financial position of current and future retirees. This thesis collects five studies regarding Pensions, Retirement, and the Financial Position of the Elderly and aims to understand the effects of aging on people’s retirement behavior and the adequacy of their (future) pensions. The thesis focuses on the role of selfemployment and part-time employment in retirement behavior and the financial resources available at retirement.