Some states and municipalities are in difficult financial straits. Many more have severely underfunded defined benefit pension plans for their past and current employees. At the intersection of these two sets, it is likely that the pension plans are not sustainable and cuts are inevitable,...

This paper presents a calculation of the time series of the after-tax rate of return to whole life insurancy. When compared to the after-tax return on an alternative portfolio of similar risk, more than 60%of the decline in life insurance savings (suitably defined) in the past two decades can be...

As the baby boom generation begins to retire, more and more workers will have accumulated considerable assets in 401(k) plans and IRAs that have no particular method of payout. This paper examines the two basic, opposing methods that have been proposed as solutions to this problem. The first is...

The fact that most eldealy individuals in the United States choose to maintain a flat age-wealth profile, rather than buy individual life annuities, stands in contrast to central implications of the standard life-cycle model of consumption-saving behavior. The analysis in this paper lends...