One of the major challenges facing Americans today is how to prepare for a secure retirement. While market ups and downs are unpredictable, peole do have control over work and saving decisions that can significantly improve their retirement prospects. This brief uses a simple model to estimate...

States have begun to respond to their pension challenge by enacting a mix of revenue increases and benefit cuts. These changes will, over time, improve the financial outlook for plans and help ease their impact on other budget priorities. But, to date, the specific nature and magnitude of these...

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....

This paper summarizes what is known about the labor supply of older men, defined as those 55 and over. The topic is of great interest because older individuals will comprise a much greater portion of the population, so their labor supply will have a significant impact on national output, tax...

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...

The employer match of employee contributions is an important characteristic of 401(k) plans. The match was designed to encourage participation and contributions ñ particularly by lower-paid employees. However, at many companies, the employer match became a casualty of the financial collapse and...

The impact of the financial crisis on the retirement savings of the Early Baby Boomers has received considerable attention. Indeed, from the peak of the market in 2007 to the trough in March 2009, these Early Boomers lost a lot of money - $1 trillion. But they have already recovered roughly half...

The maturation of the 401(k) system and the enactment of the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which made 401(k) plans easier and more automatic, were expected to enhance the role that 401(k)s played in the provision of retirement income. So, originally, the release of the Federal Reserve’s 2007...