Summary
Trends in Health Coverage for Part-Time Workers
- The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) requires that employers with 50 or more full-time workers pay a penalty if they fail to provide health coverage to full-time workers in 2014, which has raised concern that employers may respond by cutting back on health coverage for part-time workers or by increasing the proportion of part-time workers employed.
- The recent recession has already resulted in an increased use of part-time workers: The percentage of workers employed part-time has been rising since 2007, increasing from 16.7 percent to 22.2 percent in 2011.
- Part-time workers have experienced a much larger decline in coverage than full-time workers. Between 2007 and 2011, full-time workers experienced a 2.8 percent reduction in the likelihood of having coverage from their own jobs, while part-time workers experienced a 15.7 percent decline.
IRA Withdrawals: How Much, When, and Other Saving Behavior
- Households between ages 61 and 70 that made withdrawals even though they were not yet required to take IRA distributions (i.e., not subject to the required minimum distribution rules, or RMD) made larger withdrawals than older households, both in absolute dollar amounts as well as a percentage of IRA account balance.
- The bottom-income quartile of this age group had a very high percentage (48 percent) of households that made an IRA withdrawal, and that their average annual percentage of account balance withdrawn (17.4 percent) was higher than the rest of the income distribution.
- Among households between ages 71 and 80 that are subject to RMDs, those that have a withdrawal exceeding the RMD amount had average withdrawal amounts that were more than double the amounts taken by those that withdrew only the RMD amount. The percentage of account balance withdrawn was also much larger for households that withdrew more than the RMD amount.
- Younger households (61 to 70) that made IRA withdrawals spent most of it, while for those between 71 and 80 there was some increase in savings (in CDs and similar holdings) associated with an IRA withdrawal.