Search results for ""Author Teresa Ghilarducci""

A crisis is looming for baby boomers and anyone else who hopes to retire in the coming years. In When I'm Sixty-Four, Teresa Ghilarducci, the nation's leading authority on the economics of retirement, explains how to confront this crisis head-on, revealing the causes behind the increasingly precarious economics of old age in America and proposing a bold plan to guarantee retirement security for every working citizen. Retirement is one of the hallmarks of a prosperous, civilized market economy. Yet in America today Social Security is on the ropes. Government and employers are dismantling pension security, forcing older people to work longer. The federal government spends billions in exemptions for 401(k)s and other voluntary retirement accounts, yet retirement savings for most workers is falling. Ghilarducci takes an unflinching look at the eroding economic structure of retirement in America--and what she finds is alarming. She exposes the failures of pension regulators and the false hopes of privatized Social Security. She tells the ugly truth about risky 401(k) plans, do-it-yourself retirement schemes, and companies like Enron that have left employees without any retirement savings. Ghilarducci puts forward a sweeping plan to revive the retirement-income system, a plan that will ensure that, after forty years of work, every American will receive 70 percent of their preretirement earnings, guaranteed for life. No other book makes such a persuasive case for overhauling the pension and Social Security system in order to provide older Americans with the financial stability they have earned and deserve.

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"While demographic forces make it inevitable that social institutions that encouraged workers to retire in their early sixties must change, this book shows that how we make these changes will have substantial implications for the risk of poverty and the general level of economic well-being of older populations. Its theme is that policy changes that encourage those able to work at older ages to do so must not come at the expense of our current system's protection of those less able to work. This is an important book for those interested in understanding how recent changes in the United States retirement system are impacting the employment and economic well-being of older workers." —Richard V. Burkhauser, Sarah Gibson Blanding Professor of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University "The editors have done an excellent job of compiling some very valuable and interesting papers on working longer. With improvements in health and life expectancy, the decreasing physical requirements of work, and our financing shortfalls, the options of working longer, phased retirement, and more flexibility for retirement ages in retirement plans can be winners. In particular, I found the Introduction's synopsis of the papers by itself worth the price of the book." —Ron Gebhardtsbauer, American Academy of ActuariesWhile mandatory retirement has been eliminated in the United States, a myriad of policies and practices surround pensions, social security, tax law, labor contracts, and health benefits, all of which may have an impact on an older worker’s decision to work or retire and an employer’s decision to retain and train an older worker. In Work Options for Older Americans, Teresa Ghilarducci and John Turner assemble a critically important volume that systematically addresses many of the issues considered on a daily basis by employees and employers. Work Options for Older Americans brings together discussion of these issues by well-known economists and scholars in other fields, from the Government Accountability Office, the AARP Public Policy Institute, the U.S. Department of Labor, and academia. The book contains eleven articles, along with commentary, that deal with issues of employment opportunity and constraints for older persons, pension types and coverage, retirement choices, and public policies that promote or hinder either retirement or employment of the elderly. Contributors present effective ways to prepare for this unprecedented growth in the number of older workers. In the introduction, Teresa Ghilarducci and John Turner identify how the labor market changes dramatically as workers age and how these changes affect the ongoing bargaining between employers and workers. The question is, are the options that workers want the same as those that employers offer?

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This volume outlines a fresh view on pension plans from the perspective of both the employer and employee, describing the possibilities in American labor relations and in Congress to meet employers' needs to compete and to fulfill the enduring desire of workers to plan for a financially secure period of leisure at the end of their working lives. The authors examine the advantages to employers from sponsoring a defined benefit plan and focus on ways to stabilize defined benefit plan coverage. They also look into the need for changes in regulations governing defined contribution plans, offering a number of innovative policy solutions. Finally, they provide insight into the political and institutional constraints that may impede the creation of new pension legislation that could help to strengthen defined benefit plans and improve defined contribution plans.

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Everyone deserves to be able to retire with dignity, but this core feature of the social contract is in jeopardy. Companies have swerved away from pensions, and most of the workforce has woefully inadequate retirement savings. If we don’t act to fix this broken system, rates of impoverishment for senior citizens threaten to skyrocket, and tens of millions of Americans reaching retirement age in the coming decades will be forced to delay retirement and will experience a dramatic drop in their standard of living.In Rescuing Retirement, Teresa Ghilarducci and Tony James offer a comprehensive yet simple plan to help workers save for retirement, increase retirement savings by earning higher returns, and guarantee lifelong income for everyone. Built on people’s own money in individual Guaranteed Retirement Accounts, the plan requires no new taxes, no more bureaucracy, and no increase in the deficit. Speaking to Americans’ growing anxiety about their ability to retire, Rescuing Retirement provides answers to anyone wanting to understand the growing movement to protect a period of life once considered a deserved time of rest and creativity and offers a practical guide to the future of secure retirement.

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Everyone deserves to be able to retire with dignity, but this core feature of the social contract is in jeopardy. Companies have swerved away from pensions, and most of the workforce has woefully inadequate retirement savings. If we don't act to fix this broken system, rates of impoverishment for senior citizens threaten to skyrocket, and tens of millions of Americans reaching retirement age in the coming decades will be forced to delay retirement and will experience a dramatic drop in their standard of living. In Rescuing Retirement, Teresa Ghilarducci and Tony James offer a comprehensive yet simple plan to help workers save for retirement, increase retirement savings by earning higher returns, and guarantee lifelong income for everyone. Built on people's own money in individual Guaranteed Retirement Accounts, the plan requires no new taxes, no more bureaucracy, and no increase in the deficit. Speaking to Americans' growing anxiety about their ability to retire, Rescuing Retirement provides answers to anyone wanting to understand the growing movement to protect a period of life once considered a deserved time of rest and creativity and offers a practical guide to the future of secure retirement.

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