A History of Public Sector Pensions in the United States
A History of Public Sector Pensions in the United States

Author: Robert Louis Clark

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2003-05-12

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9780812237146

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From the Wharton School, offering a comprehensive assessment of the political and financial dimensions of public-sector pensions from the colonial period until the emergence of modern retirement plans in the twentieth century.

From Here to Security: How Workplace Savings Can Keep America's Promise
From Here to Security: How Workplace Savings Can Keep America's Promise

Author: Robert L. Reynolds

Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional

Published: 2017-09-08

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1260116085

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The practical, nonpartisan guide to making our retirement savings systems work for America’s people, our economy, and the nation at large At a time of fierce political divisiveness, From Here to Security is a refreshingly balanced, non-ideological guide to solving what may be our nation’s most pressing policy challenge: achieving retirement security for all. A pioneer of the 401(k) system, Robert L. Reynolds eschews radical calls for throwing out the 401(k) entirely and creating a new government-run savings system. Our best course, he shows, is to build on what we have: a flexible, dynamic private-public system of Social Security and more robust workplace savings. From Here to Security provides a clear, powerful new approach to solving America’s retirement challenge – based on facts, data, and Reynolds’ decades of experience. While fear-mongers claim that the U.S. retirement system is on the verge of collapse; Reynolds shows why our system is actually the envy of the world. But From Here to Security is no status quo book. Reynolds lays out an action agenda to dramatically improve our retirement systems – public and private – lift our savings rate, improve people’s retirement prospects, spur faster growth – and reboot America’s national morale.

The Longevity Economy
The Longevity Economy

Author: Joseph F. Coughlin

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2017-11-07

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 1610396650

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Oldness: a social construct at odds with reality that constrains how we live after middle age and stifles business thinking on how to best serve a group of consumers, workers, and innovators that is growing larger and wealthier with every passing day. Over the past two decades, Joseph F. Coughlin has been busting myths about aging with groundbreaking multidisciplinary research into what older people actually want -- not what conventional wisdom suggests they need. In The Longevity Economy, Coughlin provides the framing and insight business leaders need to serve the growing older market: a vast, diverse group of consumers representing every possible level of health and wealth, worth about $8 trillion in the United States alone and climbing. Coughlin provides deep insight into a population that consistently defies expectations: people who, through their continued personal and professional ambition, desire for experience, and quest for self-actualization, are building a striking, unheralded vision of longer life that very few in business fully understand. His focus on women -- they outnumber men, control household spending and finances, and are leading the charge toward tomorrow's creative new narrative of later life -- is especially illuminating. Coughlin pinpoints the gap between myth and reality and then shows businesses how to bridge it. As the demographics of global aging transform and accelerate, it is now critical to build a new understanding of the shifting physiological, cognitive, social, family, and psychological realities of the longevity economy.

Social Security and Early Retirement
Social Security and Early Retirement

Author: Robert Fenge

Publisher: CESifo Book

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13:

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Theoretical and empirical analysis of the relationship between retirement decision and pension systems, with policy recommendations for reversing the current trend toward early retirement. The contrasting trends toward earlier retirement and greater longevity have resulted in steadily increasing retirement costs over the last forty years. One important factor influencing early retirement decisions is the expansion of retirement benefits; but studies predict that most countries, particularly those with early retirement incentives, will be unable to meet future pension and social security obligations. In this timely CESifo volume, Robert Fenge and Pierre Pestieau examine empirical and theoretical evidence that explains why early retirement has become such a burden for social security systems and suggest pension system reforms that will reverse the trend. Drawing on evidence from the European Union (with comparisons to other industrialized countries including the United States and Canada), the authors demonstrate that the effective retirement age is influenced by social security regulations (such as a change in eligibility age) and discuss ways of measuring these embedded incentives. Fenge and Pestieau examine the implicit taxes on prolonged working life from normative and political economy perspectives. They discuss optimal payroll tax rates that minimize distortions of labor supply and retirement decisions and consider alternative ways to finance benefits, including consumption and capital income taxation. They discuss why policies are designed to discourage employment among older workers and why reforms to counter this often meet resistance. They demonstrate, contrary to the belief of many European governments, that pushing older workers into retirement does not free jobs for young unemployed workers. They show that the gap between salaries and productivity is an incentive for employers to rid themselves of older workers and argue that governments should not support this behavior by compensating older workers for the difference between severance payments and salaries in early retirement programs.