Download or read book Do Low Income Workers Benefit From 401 k Plans written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 401(k) plans â€" the main retirement savings vehicle for millions of workers â€" allow participants to save on a tax-deferred basis. This tax incentive is more valuable to workers in high-income families than workers in low-income families because they face higher marginal income tax rates. Not surprisingly, then, studies of the distributional effects of 401(k)s find that they mainly benefit high-income workers. However, these studies assume that employer contributions to 401(k)s do not affect the total compensation that each worker receives â€" that is, every worker “pays forâ€ŗ employer contributions in the form of lower wages. This brief challenges this assumption, testing whether employer contributions may actually increase total compensation for low-income workers, who may be more reluctant than high-income workers to accept wage reductions in exchange for retirement saving contributions. The brief is organized as follows. The first section provides background on 401(k)s, specifically their tax treatment and the rationale for employer contributions. The second section explores the traditional theory of how fringe benefits affect workersâ€TM total compensation and why the theory might not uniformly hold for employer contributions to 401(k)s. The third section describes an experiment to test this theory and presents the results. The final section concludes that additional employer 401(k) contributions appear to reduce wages only modestly for low-income workers, resulting in higher total compensation for these workers. These results suggest that traditional analyses may understate the benefits that 401(k)s provide for rank-and-file workers.
Download or read book 401 k Plans written by United States. General Accounting Office and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book How Workers Use 401 K Plans written by William F. Bassett and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This paper examines how workers use 401(k) plans by examining their participation, contribution, and withdrawal decisions. Sixty-five percent of eligible workers participate in 401(k) plans. Employee participation rises with income, age, job tenure, and education. While participation also rises if the employer matches contributions, 401(k) participation does not grow with the rate of matching. When pension plan assets are withdrawn in lump-sum distributions before retirement, just 28 percent of distribution recipients (representing 56 percent of distribution assets) roll over the withdrawn funds into tax-qualified savings plans. Our findings suggest that many workers, particularly those with low incomes, do not use 401(k) plans to save for retirement"--Abstract
Download or read book Strengthening Social Security written by United States. Congress. Senate. Special Committee on Aging and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book How Workers Use 401 K Plans written by Michael J. Fleming and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines how workers use 401(k) plans by examining their participation, contribution, and withdrawal decisions. Sixty-five percent of eligible workers participate in 401(k) plans. Employee participation rises with income, age, job tenure, and education. While participation also rises if the employer matches contributions, 401(k) participation does not grow with the rate of matching. When pension plan assets are withdrawn in lump-sum distributions before retirement, just 28 percent of distribution recipients (representing 56 percent of distribution assets) roll over the withdrawn funds into tax-qualified savings plans. Our findings suggest that many workers, particularly those with low incomes, do not use 401(k) plans to save for retirement.
Download or read book The Impact of PPA on Retirement Savings for 401 k Participants written by Jack VanDerhei and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper simulates (under several assumptions) the likely impact of 401(k) plan sponsors switching from voluntary enrollment systems to automatic enrollment designs with automatic escalation of contributions for a significant portion of workers (not just current 401(k) participants or those eligible to participate). This analysis indicates that even under the most conservative assumptions for auto-escalation of contributions, switching 401(k) plans to auto-enrollment is likely to have a very significant positive impact in generating additional retirement savings for many workers, especially for low-income workers. When results are aggregated across all income categories, the increase in the value of 401(k) accumulations at age 65 as a multiple of final earnings for those currently ages 25-29 would be approximately 2.4 to 2.6 times final salary by switching from voluntary enrollment to automatic enrollment. Although the aggregate results favor automatic enrollment, distributional analysis of the differences between the two systems indicates that the higher paid are not likely to benefit as much from such a change. The median 401(k) accumulations for the lowest-income quartile of these workers (assuming all 401(k) plans were voluntary enrollment) would only be 0.1 times final earnings at age 65 (this is largely due to the fact that 41 percent of workers - as opposed to participants - were assumed to have zero balances at age 65). However, if all 401(k) plans are assumed to be using the auto-enrollment provisions under PPA, the median 401(k) accumulations for the lowest-income quartile jumps to 2.5 times final earnings under the most conservative assumptions and 4.5 times final earnings under the most beneficial assumptions. Even for the top 25 percent of these workers (when ranked by 401(k) accumulations as a multiple of final earnings), there are large increases: the multiple under a voluntary enrollment scenario is 1.8 times final earnings, whereas auto-enrollment provides multiples ranging from 6.5 to 10.4, depending on auto-escalation of contributions. Comparing income replacement targets generated in previous EBRI work with these simulated 401(k) accumulations shows that, even with the large increases that can be expected for many workers under the safe harbor auto-enrollment plans introduced by PPA, and with current-law Social Security benefits, additional resources will still be needed for some of them.
Download or read book Private Pensions written by United States Government Accountability Office and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last 25 years, pension coverage has shifted primarily from "traditional" defined benefit (DB) plans, in which workers accrue benefits based on years of service and earnings, toward defined contribution (DC) plans, in which participants accumulate retirement balances in individual accounts. DC plans provide greater portability of benefits, but shift the responsibility of saving for retirement from employers to employees. This report addresses the following issues: (1) What percentage of workers participate in DC plans, and how much have they saved in them? (2) How much are workers likely to have saved in DC plans over their careers and to what degree do key individual decisions and plan features affect plan saving? (3) What options have been recently proposed to increase DC plan coverage, participation, and savings? GAO analyzed data from the Federal Reserve Board's 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), the latest available, utilized a computer simulation model to project DC plan balances at retirement, reviewed academic studies, and interviewed experts.
Download or read book Retirement Plans for Self employed Individuals written by United States. Internal Revenue Service and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Privatizing Social Security written by Martin Feldstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume represents the most important work to date on one of the pressing policy issues of the moment: the privatization of social security. Although social security is facing enormous fiscal pressure in the face of an aging population, there has been relatively little published on the fundamentals of essential reform through privatization. Privatizing Social Security fills this void by studying the methods and problems involved in shifting from the current system to one based on mandatory saving in individual accounts. "Timely and important. . . . [Privatizing Social Security] presents a forceful case for a radical shift from the existing unfunded, pay-as-you-go single national program to a mandatory funded program with individual savings accounts. . . . An extensive analysis of how a privatized plan would work in the United States is supplemented with the experiences of five other countries that have privatized plans." —Library Journal "[A] high-powered collection of essays by top experts in the field."—Timothy Taylor, Public Interest
Download or read book Retirement Income written by Christian E. Weller and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines social security benefits within the context of other retirement savings programme.
Download or read book Savings Fitness written by Barry Leonard and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2007-12 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people mistakenly believe that Social Security (SS) will pay for all or most of their retire. needs, but the fact is, since its inception, SS has provided little protection. A comfortable retire. usually requires SS, pensions, personal savings & invest. The key tool for making a secure retire. a reality is financial planning. It will help clarify your retire. goals as well as other financial goals you want to ¿buy¿ along the way. It will show you how to manage your money so you can afford today¿s needs yet still fund tomorrow¿s. You¿ll learn how to save your money to make it work for you & how to protect it so it will be there when you need it. Explains how you can take the best advantage of retire. plans at work, & what to do if you¿re on your own. Illustrations.
Download or read book Save More Tomorrow written by Shlomo Benartzi and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world’s top experts in behavioral finance offers innovative strategies for improving 401(k) plans. Half of Americans do not have access to a retirement saving plan at their workplace. Of those who do about a third fail to join. And those who do join tend to save too little and often make unwise investment decisions. In short, the 401(k) world is in crisis, and workers need help. Save More Tomorrow provides that help by focusing on the behavioral challenges that led to this crisis inertia, limited self-control, loss aversion, and myopia—and transforms them into behavioral solutions. These solutions, or tools, are based on cutting edge behavioral finance research and they can dramatically improve outcomes by, for example, helping employees: -Save, even if they aren’t ready to do so now, by using future enrollment. -Save more by showing them images of their future selves. -Save smarter by reshuffling the order of funds on the investment menu. Save More Tomorrow is the first comprehensive application of behavioral finance to improve retirement outcomes. It also makes it easy for plan sponsors and their advisers to apply these behavioral tools using its innovative Behavioral Audit process.
Download or read book Retirement Savings for Low income Workers written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Finance. Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Retirement Statistics written by and published by . This book was released on 1934 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book SIMPLE IRA Plans for Small Businesses written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Individual retirement arrangements IRAs written by United States. Internal Revenue Service and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tax Withholding and Estimated Tax written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
