Policymakers have focused considerable attention on alternative ways of eliminating Social Security’s 75-year financing gap, but lost in the debate is the fact that even under current law Social Security will provide less retirement income relative to previous earnings than it does today....

Over the past two decades, coverage under employer-sponsored pension plans has shifted from traditional defined benefit to 401(k)-type defined contribution formats. This shift has many important implications for retirement security. This brief examines the differential impact of the transition...

The economic status of older Americans has improved dramatically since 1960. Today, the poverty rate for those 65 and over is about the same as for those aged 18-64. But substantial pockets of poverty remain, especially among older non-married women. This brief will focus on why older women are...

The Trustees of the Social Security system have just issued the 2005 report. The projections used in this report are prepared by Social Security's Office of the Actuary. The Report projects the system's financial outlook under three sets of cost assumptions - high, low and intermediate. This...

Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) now hold more assets than either defined benefit or defined contribution pension plans, but many people do not understand how they work. This Just the Facts reminds readers of the differences between Roth and conventional IRAs and describes their role to...

In order to encourage participation, 401(k) plans increasingly offer loans and withdrawals. This means that more and more families have access to pension funds prior to retirement. The newly released 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances shows that borrowing from pension plans has more than doubled...

A potential component of the administration’s Social Security proposal is to shift from “wage indexing” of benefits to “price indexing.” This change sounds modest, but, in fact, would change the nature of the Social Security program. Price indexing would preserve the purchasing power...

Over the past two decades, private pension coverage has shifted from defined benefit plans to 401(k) plans. This shift has many important implications for the retirement security of older Americans. One so-far-overlooked consequence is that it has changed the relative price of annuities for men...

As just reiterated in the 2005 Trustees Report, Social Security faces a 75-year deficit equal to roughly 2 percent of taxable payrolls. Closing this gap requires either a cut in benefits or an increase in taxes. One approach to cutting benefits under consideration by the administration is to...

Over the last 20 years, pension coverage has shifted from defined benefit plans, where benefits are based on years of service and final salary and generally paid as an annuity, to 401(k) plans, where individual and employer contributions and earnings on those contributions are awarded as a lump...