Emotional Intelligence: Retirement Planning and Financial Debt Products

This dissertation investigates whether emotional intelligence (EI) helps explain three retirement-relevant outcomes: (1) annuity income among U.S. adults aged 50+, (2) ownership of personal retirement accounts, and (3) acquisition of consumer debt products among college students. Essay 1 and Essay 2 analyze the 2014 and 2016 Health and Retirement Study (HRS); Essay 3 uses a 2019 cross-sectional survey of Puerto Rican undergraduates (final N=357). Probit models estimate associations, controlling for demographic, socioeconomic, and financial covariates. For annuities (Essay 1), results are mixed: EI measures show limited and inconsistent relationships with receiving annuity income once standard controls and related insurance/pension variables are included, indicating a need for further study of EI’s role in the annuity market. For personal retirement accounts (Essay 2), higher overall EI is positively associated with owning an individual retirement account, though the effect size is modest. Perceiving and facilitation abilities—emotion appraisal and using emotions to aid planning—are positively related to account ownership. Wealth and education display strong, expected positive gradients; several other standard correlates behave as in prior literature. For consumer credit outcomes (Essay 3), money perceptions (e.g., emotional attachment to money) are associated with credit-card and student-loan presence. Age, college major, expected post-graduation income, and parent–child money discussions are additional determinants of student-loan holding. These findings expand work on the psychology of money and have practical implications for financial education and aid targeting. Collectively, the essays provide early evidence that EI—and specific emotional abilities tied to recognizing and leveraging affect—relates to retirement saving behavior, while its connection to annuitization remains uncertain. The results suggest incorporating emotional-ability assessments alongside financial literacy in research and practice, and motivate future work that refines EI measurement for retirement contexts.