This report builds upon previous CEPR projections to more accurately describe the current wealth prospects for the baby boom cohorts aged 45 to 54 and 55 to 64. The severity of the housing market meltdown, coupled with the recent collapse of the stock market, has had a severe negative impact on...

This report examines one major source of bias in the yearly Current Population Survey -- nonresponse rates. It shows evidence of systematic undercounting due to the disproportionately high nonresponse rate from individuals who are less likely to be employed than the general population.

This report uses the past three recessions of the early 1980s, early 1990s and early 2000s to project the effects of a recession in 2008. The report finds that such a recession would result in a significant rise in unemployment and the poverty rate along with a significant decrease in the...

The Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) was passed in 2003 to reform the Medicare system, but the result was an inefficient set of rules and regulations. This report projects the savings from a drug benefit program that was designed with efficiency in mind.

This report shows that official estimates of the number of Americans living in poverty and without health insurance may substantially underestimate the true number of poor and uninsured.

This report analyzes recent proposals suggesting that the government buy up or guarantee bad mortgage debt in an attempt to slow the increasing number of foreclosures the nation has seen in the wake of the housing market's meltdown. The study, which focuses on the plan put forth by the Office of...

This report gives a background to the debate on privatizing Social Security. It debunks the myth that a crisis is looming, and explains that with no changes whatsoever, benefits can continue well into the future.

Some policymakers have asserted that the Social Security program will begin to face serious problems in 2018. This paper shows that the date would only pose a problem if the U.S. government were to default on the bonds held by the Social Security trust fund.

This paper extrapolates from data from the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finance to project household wealth, by wealth quintile, for the cohort that will be between the ages of 45-54 in 2009 under three alternative scenarios. The first scenario assumes that real house prices fall no further than...

This paper enumerates the flaws in a recent study by the Social Security Administration that relied on questionable assumptions to conclude that a projected shortfall in Social Security in 2042 would double the senior poverty rate from 2 to 4 percent.