Download or read book Is There a Retirement Crisis an Exploration of the Current Debate written by George A. (Sandy) Mackenzie and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Is There a Retirement Crisis An Exploration of the Current Debate written by George A. (Sandy) Mackenzie and published by CFA Institute Research Foundation. This book was released on 2020-07-03 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many quantitative empirical studies of retirement preparedness find that a substantial number of US households face a potential financial crisis at some point in the future. This monograph provides a critical survey of the most important and best-known of these studies, and it also examines the prospects for other countries. Studies of retirement preparedness vary in complexity and sophistication, and as a result, researchers offer a wide range of forecasts, with some warning of a severe crisis and others being more skeptical about the likely scale of the problem. This monograph appraises the quality of surveyed studies by determining how well each deals with key conceptual issues and how adequately each addresses principal risks. Going beyond the circumstances in the United States, the monograph also provides international perspective by comparing the “macro” and institutional aspects of pension and health systems in a group of eight industrialized countries, including the United States.
Download or read book Falling Short written by Charles D. Ellis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-01 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States faces a serious retirement challenge. Many of today's workers will lack the resources to retire at traditional ages and maintain their standard of living in retirement. Solving the problem is a major challenge in today's environment in which risk and responsibility have shifted from government and employers to individuals. For this reason, Charles D. Ellis, Alicia H. Munnell, and Andrew D. Eschtruth have written this concise guide for anyone concerned about their own - and the nation's - retirement security. Falling Short is grounded in sound research yet written in a highly accessible style. The authors provide a vivid picture of the retirement crisis in America. They offer the necessary context for understanding the nature and size of the retirement income shortfall, which is caused by both increasing income needs-due to longer lifespans and rising health costs-and decreasing support from Social Security and employer-sponsored pension plans. The solutions are to work longer and save more by building on the existing retirement system. To work longer, individuals should plan to stay in the labor force until age 70 if possible. To save more, policymakers should shore up Social Security's long-term finances; make all 401(k) plans fully automatic, with workers allowed to opt out; and ensure that everyone has access to a retirement savings plan. Individuals should also recognize that their house is a source of saving, which they can tap in retirement through downsizing or a reverse mortgage.
Download or read book From Here to Security How Workplace Savings Can Keep America s Promise written by Robert L. Reynolds and published by McGraw Hill Professional. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The practical, nonpartisan guide to making our retirement savings systems work for America’s people, our economy, and the nation at large At a time of fierce political divisiveness, From Here to Security is a refreshingly balanced, non-ideological guide to solving what may be our nation’s most pressing policy challenge: achieving retirement security for all. A pioneer of the 401(k) system, Robert L. Reynolds eschews radical calls for throwing out the 401(k) entirely and creating a new government-run savings system. Our best course, he shows, is to build on what we have: a flexible, dynamic private-public system of Social Security and more robust workplace savings. From Here to Security provides a clear, powerful new approach to solving America’s retirement challenge – based on facts, data, and Reynolds’ decades of experience. While fear-mongers claim that the U.S. retirement system is on the verge of collapse; Reynolds shows why our system is actually the envy of the world. But From Here to Security is no status quo book. Reynolds lays out an action agenda to dramatically improve our retirement systems – public and private – lift our savings rate, improve people’s retirement prospects, spur faster growth – and reboot America’s national morale.
Download or read book Will America Grow Up Before it Grows Old written by Peter G. Peterson and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1996 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The facts are plain: Social Security is headed for massive, unsustainable deficits in the next century. Politicians talk of a Social security "trust fund" but there are no hard assets in it--only government bonds. The reality is that Social Security is really a "pay as you go" system, with benefits to current retirees paid not out any saved trust funds but out of taxes on the payroll of today; s workforce. But what will happen when these employees retire; when, in less than fifteen years, the 76 million members of the baby boom generation -- the largest in our history -- stop paying in and start taking money out? And what can we as individuals and as citizens do now to prevent these catastrophic deficits. The crises towards which we are careening (by 2025, 1 American in 5 will be 65 or older and it will take an already overloaded 1.6 working Americans to support each retired person) will not only be felt personally by the many millions stranded with no savings and without benefits, but will shiver the country's economy as a whole as well as the world financial system. With courage, clarity and incontrovertible evidence, Peterson spells out this huge -- if politically unmentionable -- problem more clearly than ever before and tells us what we must do now for our personal survival and that of our children. According to recent polls, more young Americans believe in UFOs than think they will ever receive a Social Security check. Yet most Baby Boomers, as they approach retirement age, believe they will continue to live their present lifestyle in retirement -- without a fraction of the personal savings or pensions necessary to pay for the future they expect. This agingpopulation -- double today's load -- will depend on as few as 1.6 working Americans to support each retired person. Who will support this nation of Floridas? In this short, powerful book, Peter G. Peterson, one of American's top investment bankers and a leading critic of our entitlement policy, spells out in the clearest possible language, with unmistakable numbers and easy-to-read charts, the disaster that lies ahead if we continue to ignore our low saving rate, our ballooning federal deficits, and our enormous unfunded and unsustainable commitments to retirees. Peterson reveals what politicians are afraid to admit: trillions of dollars of promised benefits for which no funds have been provided. Shattering the myths surrounding this subject with hard facts and eye-opening views of the future, Peterson gives the most comprehensive and candid plan for a gradual, humane, fair, and realistic answer to the greatest challenge of the next century: transforming our political, economic, cultural, and social assumptions to adapt to the realities of the graying of America.
Download or read book Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis written by Alberto Alesina and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-06-25 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent recession has brought fiscal policy back to the forefront, with economists and policy makers struggling to reach a consensus on highly political issues like tax rates and government spending. At the heart of the debate are fiscal multipliers, whose size and sensitivity determine the power of such policies to influence economic growth. Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis focuses on the effects of fiscal stimuli and increased government spending, with contributions that consider the measurement of the multiplier effect and its size. In the face of uncertainty over the sustainability of recent economic policies, further contributions to this volume discuss the merits of alternate means of debt reduction through decreased government spending or increased taxes. A final section examines how the short-term political forces driving fiscal policy might be balanced with aspects of the long-term planning governing monetary policy. A direct intervention in timely debates, Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis offers invaluable insights about various responses to the recent financial crisis.
Download or read book Assessing Chile s Pension System Challenges and Reform Options written by Samuel Pienknagura and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2021-09-10 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chile’s pension system came under close scrutiny in recent years. This paper takes stock of the adequacy of the system and highlights its challenges. Chile’s defined contribution system was quite influential when introduced, and was taken as an example by other countries. However, it is now delivering low replacement rates relative to OECD peers, as its parameters did not adapt over time to changing demographics and global returns, while informality persists in the labor market. In the absence of reforms, the system’s inability to deliver adequate outcomes for a large share of participants will continue to magnify, as demographic trends and low global interest rates will continue to reduce replacement rates. In addition, recent legislation allowing for pension savings withdrawals to counter the effects from the COVID-19 pandemic, is projected to further reduce replacement rates and increase fiscal costs. A substantial improvement in replacement rates is feasible, via a reform that raises contribution rates and the retirement age, coupled with policies that increases workers’ contribution density.
Download or read book Remaking Retirement written by Olivia Mitchell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around the world, people nearing and entering retirement are holding ever-greater levels of debt than in the past. This is not a benign situation, as many pre-retirees and retirees are stressed about their indebtedness. Moreover, this growth in debt among the older population may render retirees vulnerable to financial shocks, medical care bills, and changes in interest rates. Contributors to this volume explore key aspects of the rise in debt across older cohorts, drill down into the types of debt and reasons for debt incurred by the older population, and review policies to remedy some of the financial problems facing older persons, in the US and elsewhere. The authors explore which groups are most affected by debt and identify the factors producing this important increase in leverage at older ages. It is clear that the economic and market environment is influential when it comes to saving and debt. Access to easy borrowing, low interest rates, and the rising cost of education have had significant impacts on how much people borrow, and how much debt they carry at older ages. In this environment, the capacity to manage debt is ever more important as older workers lack the opportunity to recover from mistakes.
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 Wealth After Work written by William G. Gale and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pensions and retirement saving plans have helped millions of households build financial security. But tens of millions of people have been left behind, without access to these wealth accumulation vehicles. For many others, the plans they have do not ensure financial security in retirement. The problems that underlie these failures can be addressed. This book proposes concrete, practical ways to make dependable retirement income accessible for all Americans—not just those with means. Individual accounts have eclipsed traditional pensions as the primary vehicle for retirement saving in the United States—a shift that underlies many sources of retirement insecurity. The 401(k) plan and similar accounts have increased financial security for many people but have done nothing for millions more. Many of those who do have such plans are burdened with the need to make numerous saving, investment, and withdrawal decisions that stress their financial acumen. Financial advice that is unbiased, unconflicted, and affordable is often difficult to find. Managing wealth in retirement—especially the need to convert retirement savings into steady income—poses significant challenges that current financial instruments and practices do not adequately address. Economic downturns like the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic increase financial insecurity and make addressing these issues more urgent. Written by noted experts in the field, Wealth After Work offers practical solutions that address these concerns. The proposals show how policymakers can help all Americans gain access to retirement savings accounts, obtain better information about their savings choices, and better manage their wealth in retirement. By proposing solutions that build on, rather than replace the existing system, the book provides a nuanced, practical guide to reform that would benefit all Americans.
Download or read book Dismantling Solidarity written by Michael A. McCarthy and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-01 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has old-age security become less solidaristic and increasingly tied to risky capitalist markets? Drawing on rich archival data that covers more than fifty years of American history, Michael A. McCarthy argues that the critical driver was policymakers' reactions to capitalist crises and their political imperative to promote capitalist growth.Pension development has followed three paths of marketization in America since the New Deal, each distinct but converging: occupational pension plans were adopted as an alternative to real increases in Social Security benefits after World War II, private pension assets were then financialized and invested into the stock market, and, since the 1970s, traditional pension plans have come to be replaced with riskier 401(k) retirement plans. Comparing each episode of change, Dismantling Solidarity mounts a forceful challenge to common understandings of America’s private pension system and offers an alternative political economy of the welfare state. McCarthy weaves together a theoretical framework that helps to explain pension marketization with structural mechanisms that push policymakers to intervene to promote capitalist growth and avoid capitalist crises and contingent historical factors that both drive them to intervene in the particular ways they do and shape how their interventions bear on welfare change. By emphasizing the capitalist context in which policymaking occurs, McCarthy turns our attention to the structural factors that drive policy change. Dismantling Solidarity is both theoretically and historically detailed and superbly argued, urging the reader to reconsider how capitalism itself constrains policymaking. It will be of interest to sociologists, political scientists, historians, and those curious about the relationship between capitalism and democracy.
Download or read book Exploring the Economics of Retirement written by United States. Congress. Senate. Special Committee on Aging and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Communities in Action written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
Download or read book The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report written by Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.
Download or read book Pensions in the Public Sector written by Olivia S. Mitchell and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pension Research Council of the Wharton School, this book explores the diversity of governmental pension plans and investigates how these financial institutions must change in years to come.
Download or read book Growing Older in America written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Retirementology written by Gregory Salsbury and published by FT Press. This book was released on 2010-04-25 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bonus content "What's Your Retirementology I.Q.?" included in this digital edition. Looking ahead to retirement? Depending on your circumstances and your age, you may no longer have any margin for error. And your emotions and irrational behavior could be perpetuating a dangerous cycle of overspending and rising debt that may shatter whatever vision of retirement you still have. Welcome to the world of Retirementology. Retirementology bridges retirement planning with investor psychology and the market Meltdown of 2008 to produce an entirely new way of thinking about how we spend, how we save, how we borrow, and how we invest. Financial mistakes are deeply rooted in human nature, but you may be able to overcome them--if you understand the breakthrough principles of behavioral economics and apply them in your own retirement planning. Dr. Gregory Salsbury identifies some of the classic cognitive biases and behavioral mistakes most of us keep making when it comes to retirement planning. For example: Why will people drive 45 minutes to use a $2.00 coupon? Why won’t people sell a poor performing stock just because they inherited it from grandma? Why do people spend differently with a credit card than they do with cash? Why do people believe that they paid no income taxes because they received a refund? You’ll learn why the financial meltdown has amplified the impact of these all-too-human cognitive mistakes and discover ideas for addressing them. The bottom line for your bottom line is that retirement can no longer be ignored, viewed as a single event, relegated to a “zone,” or romanticized. Instead, you must understand how every spending and financial decision you make from here on can impact the way you will spend your golden years. Retirementology attempts to help you do just that. Retirement planning: right brain versus left brain Why these different areas of the brain impact financial decisions--and what to do about it It’s real money! “De-layering” your finances How to overcome the psychological tricks that separate you from your money Family matters: managing financial support decisions for your extended family Choosing between your family or your retirement Get “long-term smart” How longevity, inflation, volatility, and your own expectations impact your retirement goals
