Our extensive work on retirement policy covers the many ways the aging of America will trigger changes in how we work, retire, and spend federal resources.
The number of Americans age 65 and over will rise from about 13 percent in 2008 to 20 percent by 2040. The recession dealt a heavy blow to retirement accounts, leaving many older adults worried about their retirement security. Read more.
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Retirement Policy: a crosscutting team of Urban Institute experts study the aging of American society
In commentary for the San Francisco Chronicle, Gene Steuerle asserts that all of the following myths about Social Security retirement ages are wrong: (1) increasing the retirement age will reduce benefits; (2) increasing the retirement age discriminates against lower-income workers with shorter life expectancies; (3) increasing the retirement age makes Social Security reform regressive; (4) Social Security Old Age Insurance goes to the old; and (5) the elderly need to fear such Social Security reforms as increasing the retirement age.
Traditional analyses of retirement decisions focus on the age, from birth, of the individual making choices about how much to work, consume, and save for old age. However, remaining life expectancy is arguably a better way of examining these issues. As mortality rates decline, people at a given age now have more remaining years of life expectancy than they did in the past. If participation rates at older ages remain constant (or decline), then average time spent in retirement will increase. Additionally, because health status and mortality are positively correlated, adults with more expected years of life are generally in better health (and better able to work) than those with fewer years of remaining life. This paper examines labor force participation rates of older workers considering both chronological age and remaining life expectancy.
Social Security is America's favorite government program. The program paid over $615 billion in benefits to over 50 million retired and disabled workers, their dependents, and their survivors in 2008.
The recession has increased joblessness among older Americans. These graphs and tables report unemployment rates and how they have varied by age, sex, race, and education since 2007.
This study comparing retirement patterns over the past 30 years finds that older adults are now working longer and taking more complex routes out of the labor force. More than 40 percent of men born 1943 to 1947 did not retire by age 65, compared with only 20 percent of those born 1933 to 1937. Men and women born 1933 to 1937 were much more likely than those born 20 years earlier to move to part-time work at older ages and return to work after retiring instead of following the traditional route of retiring only once directly from full-time employment.
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Our extensive work on retirement policy covers the many ways the aging of America will trigger changes in how we work, retire, and spend federal resources.