EBRI Looks at “End-of-Life Financial Situation in America”

The Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI) recently published an interesting examination of financial situations of older Americans at the end of their lives.  The report documents:

• the percentage of households with a member who recently died “with few or no assets,”
• the continued importance of Social Security for older households,
• the potential importance of “big data” analytics “to determine how people behave when it comes to health and retirement plans,” including the potential to “get better results at lower cost,” and
• the fact that the “health sector is considerably farther down the road than the retirement sector in using data analytics in benefits plan design and management.”

The report (executive summary here and full PDF here) suggests future avenues for research.