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Retirement/ Social Security Policy Studies

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• 2010 Social Security Trustees Report: Reform Needed Now

  By David C. John, The Heritage Foundation
  
  Backgrounder, 08/12/2010
  

  Social Security has served past generations well, and helped to significantly reduce the number of retirees forced to live in poverty. But its pending deficits mean that younger workers cannot receive the same level of benefits as their parents and grandparents did. Congress must fix Social Security now. Delay will only raise the cost of reforms and make it much more likely that Congress will resort to tax increases instead of the kind of fundamental reforms that are needed to enable Social Security to serve younger workers as well as it served older generations.

  
  
  

• Meeting the Long-Term Challenge of Old-Age Entitlement Spending: What Can We Learn from the Greenspan Commission?

  By By Robert Gillingham, Mercatus Center
  
  Working Paper Series, 06/15/2010
  

  A Greenspan-type commission will not obviate considering and ultimately answering questions of this type in a manner that achieves social goals without losing the benefits of market forces. However, the key lesson from the Greenspan Commission is that government action will be required to address entitlement spending at some point to avoid the exhaustion of the social insurance trust funds. The political challenge is to use this fact to motivate action before trust fund exhaustion is imminent to (1) avoid last-minute fixes that might not address the problem in the most effective manner and (2) reduce the scope and smooth the timing of reforms to make them more palatable to the electorate.

  
  
  

• Social Security: A Fresh Look at Policy Alternatives

  By Jagadeesh Gokhale, Cato Institute
  
  Book, 06/15/2010
  

  Many of us suspect that Social Security faces eventual bankruptcy. But the government projects its future finances using long outdated methods. Employing a more up-to-date approach, Jagadeesh Gokhale here argues that the program faces insolvency far sooner than previously thought. Constructing a detailed simulation of the forces shaping American demographics and the economy to project their future evolution, he then uses this simulation to analyze six prominent Social Security reform packages—two liberal, two centrist, and two conservative—to demonstrate how far they would restore the program’s financial health and which population groups would be helped or hurt in the process. Arguments over Social Security have raged for decades, but they have taken place in a relative informational vacuum; Social Security provides the necessary bedrock of analysis that will prove vital for anyone with a stake in this important debate.

  
  
  

• The Russian Federation in an Era of Demographic Crisis

  By Nicholas Eberstadt, Hans Groth, American Enterprise Institute
  
  Paper, 04/28/2010
  

  All countries in the “more developed regions” face major challenges in coming to grips with the social security and social protection challenges that await their societies in the decades immediately ahead. By and large, these challenges are being driven by a common set of demographic trends. Russia’s faces these same challenges—but additional ones as well. For the Russian Federation must attempt to provide for the prospective support of a growing pensionage population that stands to be far more frail and infirm than its counterparts in affluent Western societies—and to do so on the basis of a workforce that is unusually debilitated, constrained by relatively low levels of labor productivity, and set to shrink in absolute size quite rapidly over the next several decades. In planning to meet the retirement needs of an aging population over the coming generation, the Russian Federation’s options are there much more limited—and perhaps unpleasant—than those available for many other countries in the “more developed regions”.

  
  
  

• Preparing for Retirement in an Uncertain World

  By Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier, Thomas R. Saving, National Center for Policy Analysis
  
  Policy Report, 04/06/2010
  

  In previous generations, many workers could expect to automatically receive a steady stream of retirement income from Social Security and a pension from their union or employer. Like Social Security, traditional defined benefit pension plans promised a monthly annuity for life. Along with personal savings, pensions and Social Security were the mainstays of retirement. Increasingly, however, American workers must make their own retirement investment decisions. Lifecycle investment strategies offer one of the best choices for personal retirement investment. They reduce the risks of volatile stock prices by gradually shifting the mix of investments from stocks to bonds as an individual ages. As the individual approaches retirement, the portfolio becomes increasingly less risky.

  
  
  

• Chile’s New Pension Reforms

  By Estelle James, Alejandra Cox Edwards, Augusto Iglesias, National Center for Policy Analysis
  
  Policy Report, 03/31/2010
  

  In PAYGO systems, as the ratio of retirees to workers increases, successive generations must pay higher taxes to cover the benefits of the previous generation. Personal account systems, by contrast, require workers to save for their retirement, invest workers’ savings productively, and fund workers’ benefits through their own accumulated funds. In 2008, a council appointed by Chile’s newly-elected, center-left coalition government to review the pension system reaffirmed the basic principle of reliance on private individual accounts and extended the system to groups not previously required to participate. At the same time, the new reforms expanded and restructured public benefits for individuals with little or no private pension. These changes will protect noncontributors and low contributors from a sharp drop in income after they retire. The danger under these new reforms is that fiscal costs may grow faster than expected. Furthermore, the phase out of the generous public benefits for those with larger private pension accounts creates an implicit marginal tax penalty that may discourage some individuals from contributing to personal accounts.

  
  
  

• Automatic IRA Builds Retirement Security

  By David C. John, The Heritage Foundation
  
  WebMemo, 02/12/2010
  

  President Obama’s FY 2011 budget contains at least one common-sense idea that could help to increase Americans’ retirement security: the Automatic IRA.

  
  
  

• CBO’s Prediction of Impending Social Security Deficits: What Does It Mean?

  By Chuck Blahous, Hudson Institute
  
  Report, 10/13/2009
  

  This report shows that while we do not know the exact date at which Social Security deficits will arrive, it is clear that they will arrive much sooner than most previous projections. When that date arrives, difficult choices must be made between placing additional burdens on taxpayers and adding still more to skyrocketing deficits. Should comprehensive health care legislation be enacted, the outlook will worsen still further. Though seniors can count on receiving their Social Security checks in the near term, the updated projections reveal that federal policy makers have permitted the Social Security problem to compound dramatically.

  
  
  

• A Diet COLA for Social Security? Not Really

  By Andrew G. Biggs, American Enterprise Institute
  
  Retirement Policy Outlook, 10/13/2009
  

  Due to falling prices, Social Security will make no cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to retirement benefits in 2010. Retirees, who feel their benefits are too low and believe the prices they pay are rising, are up in arms. But most retirees do not know that “no COLA” can actually translate into big benefit increases. When falling prices coincide with stable benefits, purchasing power increases. Moreover, Medicare premium increases are limited in years in which no COLA is paid. Combined, the typical retiree will be better off by almost $725 this year. Paying a COLA this year is unnecessary and would boost the long-term Social Security deficit.

  
  
  

• Your Retirement or Our Political Agenda: How Politicized Investment Strategies Threaten Workers’ Pensions

  By F. Vincent Vernuccio, Competitive Enterprise Institute
  
  On Point, 10/06/2009
  

  The Employee Retirement Income Security Act imposes a clear fiduciary duty on pension plan managers to invest only for the purpose of providing benefits and defraying risk. The rules for proxy voting are the same. Plan managers should not advocate or participate in proxy campaigns for social or political ends. Their only job is to ensure enough benefits for retirees and minimize risk through diversification. Department of Labor Interpretive Bulletins 08-1 and 08-2 faithfully adhere to the intent of ERISA and help safeguard pensioners’ savings against objectives unrelated to their retirement security. The Obama administration should not give into the demands of those who would like use the retirement savings they control—but do not own—for political purposes.

  
  
  
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