President Biden has pledged to oppose any and all cuts to restore the critically underfunded Social Security system to solvency. This makes for good politics for Biden and congressional Democrats. But it is bad for the Americans who will depend on the nation's retirement and disability program in the future. With most Democrats opposing ...

Since 2001, Social Security benefits have increased by 21 percent above inflation. No elected official seeking to remain elected will dial those benefits back. Senator John Thune (South Dakota), the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, has suggested that Congress take up Social Security reform as part of its legislation to increase ...

The ‘Secure Act 2.0’ is a start. For real progress, lawmakers should treat private savings and Social Security reform as a package. The House voted 414-5 on March 29 to pass the Securing a Strong Retirement Act, or “Secure Act 2.0,” hailed in news reports as legislation that would “change the way Americans save for retirement” by requiring ...

Americans have traditionally saved for retirement through their employers, whether it was via traditional “defined benefit” pensions or today’s more common 401(k) retirement accounts. But how is America’s employer-based retirement savings system faring? Some have grave doubts, but the data show clearly that, via employer-sponsored ...

Most observers are aware of the rising cost of state and local government employee retirement plans, driven by benefit increases, overoptimistic investment return assumptions and failures by governments to make full contributions as required. But in a recent study, the National Conferences of Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS) ...

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of our society and economy, but one area where we fear irreparable damage is in retirement savings. Americans approaching retirement in 2020 suffered a simultaneous hit to both the financial markets and the job markets, reducing the value of their savings and making it hard to make up the ...

“A groundbreaking new study holds troubling news for millions of Americans now nearing retirement age,” pronounces an influential Washington, DC think tank. The study, authored by a prominent economist, finds that “More than 40% of households headed by someone between the ages of 47 and 64 will not be able to replace even half of ...

A quirk in how Social Security is calculated will cost 60-year-olds thousands a year. The Covid-19 pandemic has been tough on Americans nearing retirement: Their 401(k) balances have been reduced and, so long as shutdowns of businesses are in place, it’s harder for workers to delay retirement. This would seem to make Social Security more ...

Other states will line up for money if Washington rewards Springfield for mismanaging its pensions. The day the prophets of public finance long foretold has come to pass: Illinois has requested a federal bailout of its struggling public-employee retirement plans, which had unfunded liabilities topping $469 billion in 2018, according to a ...

The Coronavirus, or COVID-19, presents a severe and unusual challenge to our economy: millions of Americans would like to travel, shop or eat at restaurants and millions more are willing and able to provide those services, but are prevented from doing so due to social distancing, quarantines and government-ordered curfews designed to halt ...

I don’t generally buy into the “greedy-geezer” narrative when it comes to entitlement reform. And yet it’s hard to find a flattering description for a generation that demands to receive Social Security benefits that it refused to pay for. That’s in fact what happened over the past 30 years and presidential candidates from both political ...

Americans are concerned and even afraid for their retirement security. And the news headlines often don’t make them feel better. The latest is a claim from the National institute for Retirement Security that “A plurality of older Americans, 40.2 percent, only receive income from Social Security in retirement.” If true that’s very worrying. ...

If we hike payroll taxes as much as they want to, billions in income-tax revenues are no longer needed. Social Security reform hasn’t seen this much activity since President Bush’s ill-fated efforts in the mid 2000s. But this time, the action is on the Democratic side, with near-unanimous support among House Democrats for the Social Security ...

Applying the same method, telemarketers don’t make enough and nurses are overpaid. Are public-school teachers really underpaid? It’s a claim often made during teacher pay disputes, but the same data and statistical methods that produce the “teacher salary gap” lead to some ridiculous conclusions—such as that nurses and firefighters ...

The other day I was speaking with a reporter about Americans' level of retirement preparation. Usually I touch on data on retirement plan participation, average contribution rates, retirement plan assets and average retirement ages – all of which have gone up. But this time I asked a more straightforward question: What share of current ...

This is a reader request, based on an email asking how my recent Wall Street Journal op-ed – which deemed the so-called retirement crisis to be “phony” – jibes with the National Institute for Retirement Security’s (NIRS) study finding that America faces a $14 trillion “retirement savings gap” with a staggering 92 percent of working-age ...

The Social Security 2100 Act doesn't live up to the rhetoric. On January 31, over 200 House Democrats jointly introduced the Social Security 2100 Act, legislation that would expand Social Security both by raising the 12.4 percent payroll tax and by phasing out the current $132,000 cap on taxable earnings. Social Security Works, an activist ...

This week the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA) published a short article claiming that “New Data Shows Drop in Retirement Coverage for All Income Levels,” contributing to the narrative that Americans face a “retirement crisis” that government must step in to address. In reality, the article should have been titled “Bad ...

“Public Pension Return Assumptions Fall to All-Time Low,” reads a recent headline in the trade journal Chief Investment Officer, which caters to state and local government pension advisers. In fact, nearly the precise opposite is the case: never before have public sector pensions assumed such high investment returns, and they have done so ...

In December 2014 I wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal – which drew on some work in an earlier AEI piece – showing that state and local pension plans are taking substantially greater investment risk today than in the past. That’s not a controversial position – you simply need to look at pensions’ investment portfolios, which over ...

A CBO study shows that Social Security benefits are far from meager, despite progressive claims. Every Democrat running for president has pledged to increase Social Security benefits, on grounds that Americans’ retirement savings are inadequate and the costs are affordable. Republicans in the race instead focus on restoring Social Security ...

Reducing the Social Security payroll tax for older workers would tempt many to resist retirement. The Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security will become insolvent in 2029, requiring steep tax increases or benefit cuts. Meanwhile, many Americans are concerned that they might not have enough money for retirement. A simple way ...

The disability insurance fund is going broke, but a Democratic plan papers over the problem. To glimpse the Democratic Party’s idea of entitlement reform, consider the “One Social Security Act” introduced this summer by California Rep. Xavier Becerra, the ranking Democrat on the House Social Security Subcommittee. His bill would merge ...

To make up for shortfalls in contributions, plans take extraordinary risks to earn higher returns. State and local government pensions were national news during the recession, as unfunded liabilities rose into the trillions of dollars and overheated commentators predicted that rising pension costs could push governments into bankruptcy. ...

It’s a myth that closing a defined-benefit plan to new hires generates big ‘transition costs. The Pennsylvania State House held a hearing on Tuesday about reforms that would shore up the state’s public-employee pension program. The hearing was overdue. Annual required contributions to the state’s defined-benefit plan have soared to more than ...

Proposals to raise Social Security benefits use a dubious formula. That could spell big trouble. It is now conventional wisdom that Americans face a retirement "crisis," in part because Social Security benefits are seen as inadequate. For instance, the Social Security Administration's website explains that "most financial advisers say you'll ...

Once education, marital status and occupations are considered, the 'gender wage gap' all but disappears. April 8 is "Equal Pay Day," an annual event to raise awareness regarding the so-called gender wage gap. As President Obama said in the State of the Union address, women "still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns," a claim echoed by ...