16: The Retirement Crisis

Today we have a disagreement on whether there’s a retirement crisis in the United States. To have this conversation, we’ve brought together two thought leaders on the topic.

Andrew Biggs is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He studies social security reform, pensions and public sector benefits. Before joining AEI, Biggs was the principal deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration.

Monique Morrissey is a Senior Economist at the Economic Policy Institute. Her areas of expertise span social security, pensions, older workers and household savings. A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, Monique is active in efforts to reform the private retirement system.

• Will millions of us never be able to stop working?
• Is social security actually on the verge of collapse?
• How much should we be panicking?

Before we get started, economists think about retirement as a three-legged stool: social security, employer retirement accounts, and personal savings or other assets. We’ll talk about all three legs, how shaky they are, and whether or not the U.S. government needs to fold up a napkin and jam it under one or two of them. ;)

Since the 1970s, there has been a national shift away from defined-benefit plans or “DB Plans,” such as pensions, in which employers funded and guaranteed a retirement benefit for their workers. We started seeing a lot more defined-contribution (“DC Plans”) such as 401(k)s, where workers primarily fund their own accounts, and employers can match contributions - or choose not to.

This episode is moderated by Catherine Cushenberry.

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