RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
David C. John and Ruth Levine, January 13, 2010, Retirement Security Project
Financial security in retirement is an important goal for working families in the United States and worldwide. David John and Ruth Levine examine retirement savings plans in four countries with unique pension systems - Australia, Chile, New Zealand and the United Kingdom - to draw lessons for U.S. policymakers in their effort to build a more sustainable pension system. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
J. Mark Iwry and John A. Turner, January 05, 2010, Retirement Security Project
Mark Iwry and John Turner examine the issue of automatic annuitization, with a focus on the significant financial risks faced by workers contemplating retirement. Inflation, an uncertain rate of return on investments, or the insolvency of a former employer or financial provider - all of these external factors can deplete retirees' assets and income. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Karen Dynan, December 22, 2009, The Brookings Institution
The Federal Reserve's newest figures for its household debt service ratio, released in December 2009, show that it declined to 12.8 percent in the third quarter of 2009, indicating more households are paying off debts. Karen Dynan examines what this means for the U.S. economy, and whether the debt service ratio is a good indicator of future economic health. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Karen Dynan, November 30, 2009, Journal of Economic Perspectives
Household financial opportunities have expanded in important ways over the past several decades. Karen Dynan explores how households have seen increases in their access to credit, their ability to invest in risky assets and their control over their retirement savings. Although these developments have yielded important benefits, the financial crisis illustrates how expanded financial opportunities can also pose dangers for households. Dynan concludes that the recent crisis is likely to result in a permanent reversal of some of this expansion of household financial opportunities. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Barry P. Bosworth and Susan M. Collins, November 23, 2009, Macroeconomic Conference of the Tokyo Club Foundation for Global Studies
Barry Bosworth and Susan M. Collins examine the issue of how the balance of the U.S. trade deficit might evolve in future years as the economy emerges from the recession, both from the domestic perspective of the saving and investment balance, and from the external side in terms of the basic determinants of exports and imports and the role of the real exchange rate. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Karen Dynan, October 28, 2009, National Forum to Encourage Lower-Income Household Savings
The current financial crisis has had a great impact on how Americans are saving. In a presentation for the “National Forum to Encourage Lower-Income Household Savings,” Karen Dynan explained that while aggregate personal saving should be markedly higher than before the crisis, it is difficult to predict the level of saving for lower-income households. Read More
PAST EVENT
Thursday, July 16, 2009
10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Washington, DC
On July 16, the Retirement Security Project and the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center hosted Australian Assistant Treasurer Nick Sherry, to discuss the Superannuation Guarantee- Australia's mandatory retirement savings system- and its relevance to American policy-makers. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Gary Burtless, July 14, 2009, National Journal
For many years, economists and other experts have bemoaned American consumers’ unwillingness to save. Now Americans are saving once again, and observers worry that too much saving translates directly into too little consumer demand. Gary Burtless examines whether consumer saving was too low in the past and whether this new saving pattern will continue.
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BOOK
William G. Gale, J. Mark Iwry, David John and Lina Walker, July 01, 2009
Automatic argues for a fresh approach to increase saving, simplify retirement planning, and help manage the risks associated with today's individual account environment. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
J. Mark Iwry and David C. John, July 01, 2009, Retirement Security Project
Mark Iwry and David John spell out an ambitious yet practical set of initiatives to expand retirement saving dramatically. The authors propose making saving automatic—and hence easier, more convenient, and more likely. This strategy has been shown to be remarkably effective at
boosting participation in workplace-based 401(k) retirement savings. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Isabel V. Sawhill, June 11, 2009, McClatchy Tribune
While the government has been busy with bailouts, who is going to bail out the U.S. government when our creditors tire of lending to us? And now, thanks to the stimulus, virtually all those over age of 65 are receiving $250 checks, regardless of whether or not they need it. Isabel Sawhill says it’s time for Congress and the administration to get serious about getting our fiscal house in order. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Barry P. Bosworth and Sarah Anders, February 28, 2009, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College
This paper by Barry Bosworth and Sarah Anders reports on a project to construct and evaluate a wealth and saving dataset for those households who responded to the supplementary wealth and active saving modules of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) over the period of 1984 to 2005. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Barry P. Bosworth and Rosanna Smart, January 31, 2009, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College
Barry Bosworth and Rosanna Smart presents an overview of changes in household wealth accumulation and saving using wealth data from three micro-level surveys. They provide comparisons to the macroeconomic estimates of wealth accumulation and saving, explore problems in constructing household-level valuations of wealth, and assess the value of using household-level datasets to examine wealth accumulation and saving behavior in the United States. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Henry J. Aaron, January 29, 2009, The Fiscal High Road
Despite criticism of the Social Security Act, and it's application to twenty fist century America, Henry Aaron believes that those views are wrong. In broad outline, he says, the system is sound, sensibly designed, and affordable though some changes are now desirable, and that others will, and should, be made as economic and political conditions warrant. But he urges, they should affirm and strengthen the system, not scale it back or repeal it. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Eswar Prasad and Marcos Chamon, December 30, 2008, The Brookings Institution
In China, the household savings rate rose by 7 percent from 1995 to 2005, reflecting savings of about one quarter of disposable income. Why are Chinese households saving so much across all demographic groups? In a new paper, Eswar Prasad and Marcos Chamon analyze the savings patterns of households in China and discuss the economic drivers. Read More