This report uses two new data sources to provide insights on the evolution of retirement savings over the past three decades and how future retirees may fare. First, the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances and Distributional Financial Accounts (DFA) provide estimates of both household...

Whether parents adjust their consumption after their children leave home has important implications for our understanding of retirement income adequacy. Prior studies have found that parents reduce consumption after their children become independent, allowing them to save more for retirement....

There is much public concern over the poor math performances of U.S. students compared to other developed countries. In this paper, we consider the role of instruction style in student performance on the math literacy portion of the OECD's PISA exam, specifically looking at the...

Whether parents adjust their consumption after their children leave home has important implications for our understanding of retirement income adequacy. Prior studies have found that parents reduce consumption after their children become independent, allowing them to save more for retirement....

Social Security's Old Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund is projected to be exhausted in 2033. Without intervening legislative action, current law dictates that benefits at that time would need to be reduced by approximately 21 percent. It is commonly assumed that such benefit reductions...

Retirement income adequacy is front of mind, both for households preparing for old age and for policymakers seeking to assist them in doing so. Yet there is a central contradiction in the minds of both: while majorities seem convinced that most Americans undersave for retirement, retirees...

The state of Connecticut runs six defined benefit pension funds for its employees, which in the aggregate are among the most poorly funded retirement plans in the country and place increasing fiscal burdens on the state budget. We use a computer model to simulate the finances of these plans,...

Under current law, eligibility for Social Security retirement benefits requires 40 quarters (roughly 10 years) of earnings in covered employment. While individuals with less than 40 quarters of employment may receive benefits based on the earnings record of an eligible spouse, a small number of...

State and local public sector employee pensions are widely known to be underfunded, but pension financial reports do not reveal the true extent of funding shortfalls. Pension accounting methods assume that plan investments can earn high returns without taking any account of the market risk...