The brief’s key findings are: *The Federal Reserve’s 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances provides an opportunity to examine trends in retirement savings over the past few years. *The good news is increased use of target date funds; the bad news is no improvement in participation rates,...

Australia’s retirement income system is regarded by some as among the best in the world. It has achieved high individual saving rates and broad coverage at reasonably low cost to the government. Australia’s system does have shortcomings. It is heavily dependent on defined contribution plans...

The comparability of state-local versus private sector pay has become a major issue in the wake of the financial crisis. Funded levels of public pension plans declined sharply, and governments' ability to make the required contributions has been severely constrained by the collapse of...

The 2012 Trustees Report shows a significant increase in the program's 75 year deficit from 2.22 percent to 2.67 percent of taxable payroll and an advance in the date of trust fund exhaustion from 2036 to 2033. These changes reflect the slow recovery from the recession and rising disability...

Beginning this year, people can convert all or a portion of their traditional IRA balances into Roth IRAs. Although this new allowance for conversions applies explicitly to traditional IRAs, it also applies indirectly to balances in 401(k) plans that workers hold with former employers. These old...

The labor force participation of men age 60-74 has increased in recent years. Since reaching a post-World War-II low point in 1993, the share of such older men either working or looking for work jumped about 11 percentage points, from 33 percent in 1993 to 44 percent in 2010. The increase came...

The brief’s key findings are: *Medicaid covers not only the low-income elderly but also those with higher incomes who become impoverished by health costs, such as nursing home care. *The percentage of high-income single retirees receiving Medicaid rises with age – from near zero for those in...

The release of the Federal Reserve’s 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) is a great opportunity to assess how conflicting forces – the maturation of the system and the Pension Protection Act of 2006 on the one hand and the devastating effects of the 2008 financial collapse and Great...

The brief’s key findings are: The Great Recession threw many older individuals out of work, so it is important to understand their job search activity. The results show little tolerance for a lengthy search; the vast majority either find a job or exit the labor force within a year. Those with...

A recent Issue in Brief projected that, under the most likely scenario, the aggregate funded ratio for state and local pension plans will increase from 73 percent in 2012 to 81 percent in 2016. The “optimistic” and “pessimistic” scenarios assume higher or lower, but also constant, rates...