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Reevaluating the Retirement System

Posted on October 18, 2017
How do you picture your retirement years? Spending time with your family? Maybe traveling a little? Everyone has dreams about what they want their post-work lives to be like, but for an increasing number of Americans, those dreams are receding into the distant future. As traditional pensions have disappeared, more and more people must plan for their own retirements. However, the difficulty of saving for retirement, uncertainty about Social Security, and mounting health care costs may affect Americans’ ability to remain financially secure through retirement. Our new video helps explain the issues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=1myWQV8Hftc Today’s Watchblog focuses on our new report on the major retirement challenges Americans face, as well as our new Retirement Security collection, which sheds more light on the major issues and trends affecting older Americans’ financial security. A Top-to-Bottom Review Among other things, our report urges Congress to consider creating an independent commission to undertake a top-to-bottom review of the U.S. retirement system. There is much to examine. We focused on 4 areas:
  • changes in the traditional pillars of retirement—Social Security, pensions or employer-sponsored retirement savings plans, and individual savings—along with trends, such as rising debt and health care costs, that have made managing retirement more difficult;
  • key challenges individuals face, such as saving enough and ensuring that savings and benefits will last through longer lifetimes;
  • fiscal risks and concerns about  the adequacy of benefits that threaten the traditional pillars of retirement; and,
  • the need for a comprehensive reevaluation of the nation’s approach to financing retirement.
For more information, check out our full report and Retirement Security collection.
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