The release of the Federal Reserve’s 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) is a great opportunity to reassess Americans’ retirement preparedness as mea­sured by the National Retirement Risk Index (NRRI). The NRRI shows the share of working-age house­holds who are “at risk” of being...

The brief’s key findings are: *The National Retirement Risk Index framework is used to address how much working-age households need to save for retirement. *A typical household should get a third of its retirement income from a savings plan, with the low income needing one quarter and the high...

Long-term care is one of the major expenses faced by many older Americans. Yet, we have only limited information about the risk of needing long-term care and the expected duration of care. The expectations of needing to receive home health care, live in an assisted living facility or live in a...

The expectation of needing long-term care is an essential input into optimal saving and long-term care insurance decisions. Previous optimization models have used the Robinson (2002) transition probabilities, which have not been systematically updated and which underpredict the use of care while...

Some observers believe that investing a portion of the Social Security Trust Fund in equities would strengthen its finances and improve the program's intergenerational risk-sharing. However, equity investments would also expose the program to greater financial risk and potentially greater...

Using data from the 1992, 1998, 2004, and 2010 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), this paper compares pension participation, pension wealth, projected retirement income, and replacement rates attributable to past service, by pension type for households ages 51-56. The analysis...