The Retirement Security Project (RSP) produces rigorous evidence and analysis to help more Americans achieve a financially secure retirement.
The Project’s work is focused on optimizing well-being and risk protection in retirement while ensuring fiscal sustainability. Its key initiatives include:
Promoting tools and guidance that help seniors manage spending and risks in retirement.
The dramatic shift from workplace pensions to defined contribution plans places much greater responsibility on retirees to manage their assets in retirement, and the record number of Americans arriving at retirement over the next decade are among the first generation of retirees to face these challenges. Meanwhile, access to and participation in lifetime income options that protect retirees against the risk of outliving their assets remains low, and deteriorations in physical and cognitive health can impose additional hazards. RSP research and analysis quantifies these risks and produces evidence-based policy recommendations designed to help seniors manage them more effectively.
Ensuring major entitlement programs and tax and transfer systems are effective, resilient, well-targeted, and fiscally sustainable.
Programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid provide a foundation of support and risk protection for almost all retirees and are especially important for those without other forms of retirement income and wealth. However, demographic shifts in the population are expected to increase pressure on federal and state budgets, underscoring the imminent need to put these and other programs on a sustainable long-term path. RSP analyzes and develops policy solutions that promote effective and well-targeted fiscal policy that strengthens risk protection for older and disabled Americans in sustainable ways.
Developing a blueprint for comprehensive long-term care reform.
Models project that over half of people turning 65 over the next 20 years will develop a disability requiring assistance with personal tasks. The high prevalence combined with the growing aging population means that the number of Americans 65 and over with significant disabilities is projected to almost double from 2020 to 2065. Higher care needs are expected to impose greater costs on state and federal budgets, those who need care, and their unpaid caregivers, and increasing strain on the care workforce. While political momentum is building, the research and policy community lacks the evidence and tools needed to produce evidence-based solutions. RSP addresses this gap by generating new and original research and developing tools for cost-benefit analysis.