Paper Title
Does Retirement Consumption in Malaysia Differ Across the Consumption Distribution?

Abstract
The cross-sectional data of the Malaysian Household Expenditure Survey (HES) 2009/2010 is used to investigatethe distributional element of the retirement consumption puzzle which is defined as a drop of consumption upon retirement. Quantile regression model is used in this study to analyze the changes of consumption levelbetween the working households andthe retirees across the consumption distribution. This study also investigates the demographic and socioeconomic behavior of the households across the consumption distribution. The three different consumption measures usedas the response variables for examining the changes in the consumption level are the total expenditure, the work-related expenditure and the non-work-related expenditure.The results show that the changes in consumption level between the working households andthe retireesare significant across the consumption distribution. The results also show that the retirement consumption puzzle has smaller changes when moving up the upper percentile of the distribution, as indicated by the smaller drops in the consumption level. Finally, the results indicate that the work-related expenditure has more variations in the upper percentiles, while the non-work-related expenditure has more variations in the lower percentiles. Index Terms� Expenditure, Household Consumption, Quantile Regression, Retirement.