 Why Americans don't face a retirement crisisAndrew Biggs () and Sylvester Schieber AEI Economic Perspectives, 2015 Abstract: There is no question that many Americans face challenges in preparing for retirement. Social Security is substantially underfunded, its long-term shortfalls are increasing, and policymakers have not made reform a priority. Nonetheless, analysts' claims that Americans face a "retirement crisis" overstate what households will need in retirement, fail to account for how the presence of children in a household affects the need to save, and incorrectly point to households' declining wealth-to-income ratios as a sign of deteriorating retirement saving. A careful review of data and retirement studies reveals that the state of retirement preparedness is in fact a more modest, manageable issue. A false sense of crisis risks enacting policies that could have significant costs for government budgets and ordinary Americans' retirement security. In particular, government-run pension programs are the most poorly funded element of overall retirement saving. Policies that would make Americans more dependent on these programs could put their retirement income security at risk. Keywords: Retirement; AEI Economic Perspectives (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aei:journl:y:2015:id:836449 Access Statistics for this article More articles in AEI Economic Perspectives from American Enterprise Institute Contact information at EDIRC. |
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