A widespread perception is that state-local government workers receive high pension benefits which, combined with Social Security, provide more than adequate retirement income. This study uses the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and actuarial reports to test this hypothesis. The major finding...

The Trustees of the Social Security system have just issued the 2007 report. The report includes projections for the system over the next 75 years, prepared by the Social Security's Office of the Actuary. The bottom line is that the long-run outlook has remained virtually unchanged for the last...

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...

This paper uses the first six waves of the Health and Retirement Study to investigate the impact of pensions on expected retirement age, on the probability of being retired in each wave given employment in the previous wave, and on the probability of retiring earlier than planned. Pension...

The investment practices of public pension funds have become a topic of major interest in the wake of President Clinton's 1999 proposal to invest a portion of the Social Security Trust Funds in equities. Both supporters and opponents of the proposal point to the performance of public plans to...

The Trustees of the Social Security system have just issued the 2008 projections for the system over the next 75 years. The report contains two surprises. First, the 75-year deficit dropped to 1.70 percent of taxable payrolls from the roughly 2 percent it has been for the last 14 years. The...

Most of the discussion of retirement security focuses on declining Social Security replacement rates, modest 401(k) balances, the low level of saving, and longer life expectancy. Rising health care costs, which seem too amorphous to incorporate into numerical examples, are often characterized as...

Social investing is a movement that advocates incorporating social and environmental considerations, as well as financial factors, when making investment decisions. The most recent incarnation of this movement is the initiative by state legislatures to force public pension funds to sell their...

The economic status of older Americans has improved tremendously during the last 50 years. Today the old-age poverty rate is about one third of its mid-20th century level, and poverty among the elderly is roughly the same as that among the non-elderly. Poverty rates for older non-married women,...

As recently as the mid-1960s, the median retirement age for men - the age at which half of all men are no longer in the labor force - was 66. Today, it is 63. But given the scheduled decline in Social Security replacement rates, increased longevity, and the relatively low balances in 401(k)...