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As older workers approach the end of their working careers, they must make important decisions that will shape their economic well‐being during their remaining lifetimes. Specifically, they must decide when to retire, when to claim social security and company pensions, whether to annuitize 401(k) balances, and whether to take lump sums from defined benefit plans. Lack of knowledge or insufficient financial literacy may lead to regrettable decisions. This chapter assesses employer provided financial education as well as preretirement planning programs and examines their effectiveness in increasing knowledge and altering retirement behavior.

Many risks must be managed during the postretirement period. This chapter explores retirement planning software that provides individuals and advisors the opportunity to perform a range of calculations to help them in retirement planning. We draw on surveys and research to show how the software handles postretirement risks, and we conclude that many approaches to managing these risks are not well integrated.

This chapter compares the saving behavior of Early Baby Boomers (age 51-56 in 2004) and its predecessor cohort in the Health and Retirement Study (age 51-56 in 1992). Results indicate that the Boomers accumulated more wealth than the previous cohort, largely because they benefited from rising house prices. Nevertheless, some Boomer families are less well off, particularly those headed by those with low education and low income, and minorities. The survey also shows that many Boomers have not planned for retirement, and like the earlier cohort, nonplanners have much less wealth than planners. In other words, lack of planning is tantamount to lack of saving, irrespective of the economic changes observed over the last dozen years.

An aging-population tsunami is sweeping the world, and capital markets have buffeted pension plans while retiree healthcare care costs rise without letup. This coincidence of shocks marks a crucial moment for global retirement security, since public and private retirement systems everywhere have fared poorly just as the massive Baby Boom generation moves into retirement. Clearly, urgent efforts are needed to enhance risk management for public and private pension systems around the world. This book explores three aspects of the evolution of risk and reward-sharing in retirement to offer guidance to pension fiduciaries, plan participants, and policymakers. First, it focuses on new perspectives for assessing retirement risks and rewards. Second, it evaluates efforts to insure retirement plans. Lastly, it provides several new strategies for managing retirement system risk. This chapter previews the remarkable findings by contributors to this volume.

This chapter compares the administrative costs of public sector defined benefit and defined contribution systems offered by the federal government and many states. Administrative expenses are presented as percentages of both income and assets, and the author discusses how administrative expenses might enter into the decision by a public sector employer as to whether to establish a defined contribution plan.

Most US federal retirement plans are now fully funded, but since plan assets must legally be invested in federal securities, fund surpluses are used to reduce overall federal budget deficits. As a result, current taxpayers are not charged with the cost of future federal retirement obligations. Nevertheless, federal rules do require the employing federal agency to budget for current personnel’s accruing liability of retirement promises. Therefore, policy decisions regarding the number of federal civilian and military personnel and the design of their retirement benefits may be made with a better understanding of the costs.

This chapter explores why employers might permit phased retirement only after employees officially retire. This issue is addressed based on interviews with close to 1,000 establishments regarding their phased retirement policies. Employers were asked whether they would permit an older worker to reduce hours, and, if so, whether they favoured reduction in hours before or after official retirement. Results show that many employers do not indicate a strong preference; rather, they seem open to informally arranged reductions in hours, both before and after official retirement. Statistical methods were used to analyze what types of employers might permit hour reductions to occur before and/or after official retirement. The findings suggest that the preference for retire/rehire is at the individual rather than the establishment level, often due to pension and other benefit plan inducements. Government policy could enhance work/retirement flexibility by clarifying the meaning of what constitutes retirement under tax and labour law.

As Baby Boomers move into their 60s, they are focusing policymaker and media attention on how their generation will manage the retirement phase of their lifetime. This book acknowledges that many, though not all, in this older cohort have accumulated substantial assets, so for them, the question is what will they do with what they have? It provides a detailed exploration of how people entering retirement will deploy their accumulated assets in the near and long term, so to best meet their myriad spending, investment, and other objectives.

This chapter focuses on the lessons private industry could learn from state and local government pensions, It begins with a brief history of public pensions. It then compares public and private pensions, and discusses benefits to employees and public defined benefit plans as financial engines. It is argued that public pension plans are in a strong position to handle the coming influx of retirees, since, unlike Social Security (mainly a pay-as-you-go program); public pensions are rather well-funded (approximately 95 percent in 2003).

This chapter examines the holding patterns of company stock in defined contribution (DC) plans, why employers and employees tolerate high levels of company stock holdings, and the impact of concentrated holdings on retirement incomes. It is argued that retirement systems with concentrated stock positions will always have some participants lose their DC plan savings to firm bankruptcy. Company stock in retirement portfolios leads to greater extremes in accumulated wealth due to its higher volatility, and a lower median wealth compared to a system of diverse investments.

This chapter examines sex differences in retirement goals and responses to financial education seminars. Gender differences were observed in terms of desired retirement age, and savings and investment choices. Financial education seminars alter individual retirement objectives, with participants likely to raise their income objectives after the seminar.

This chapter evaluates new research on the behavioural aspects of retirement planning and how these can be used to design and manage retirement systems. It analyses how workers decide to save, how they manage retirement investments, and how they decide to draw down their assets in retirements. Plan design and policy responses are discussed.

The chapter examines how workers’ attitudes about money and retirement planning influence their participation in defined contribution (DC) pension plans. Workers were grouped into five “money attitude” clusters. Individuals showed difference preferences for the types of planning activities needed to be successful in conventional DC plans.

This chapter argues that firms and plan sponsors have an obligation to provide financial education in conjunction with their retirement plans. A practical definition of employer-sponsored participant education is a program that helps employees develop skills to make informed decisions and take action to improve their financial well-being in retirement. This definition incorporates the following: helping individuals based on their status as employees of an organization; providing recipients with skill development, which may include either new competencies or the enhancement of existing competencies; enabling participants to make decisions about issues; providing a basis of accurate, unbiased information for such decisions; taking an action-oriented stance and thereby attempting to affect behaviour; and seeking the long-term result of improved financial well-being.

This chapter examines the impact of retirement seminars on the savings and investment behaviour of households. Retirement seminars have the greatest effect on families at the lowest income levels and those with low education. Seminar attendance can increase both financial and net worth by 20%, and even more across subgroups of low education. Seminars also increase total wealth inclusive of pension and Social Security for both high and low education families.

This chapter outlines the plethora of employee issues with which a liquidator must deal, not the least of which concern unions and labor relations. Retention and compensation of key management and staff to operate the business through liquidation are discussed. Termination of employees, collective bargaining agreements, and retirement, health, and other benefit plans in compliance with applicable regulations such as the WARN Act are addressed.

This chapter argues that employee education programs founded on research-based principles of how adults learn best can improve participants’ investment decisions, and in turn retirement security. A learner-centred process can be used to teach participants how to apply information about investment options to develop effective financial plans. The techniques work best when learners are engaged as active, self-determining individuals.

This chapter states that a pension plan is a financial intermediary. A pension plan is also a contractual arrangement that employers and unions use to manage employees. It also transfers claims to income from an employee’s working years to his or her retirement years. New patterns of business organization gave rise to what may be called the employee’s pension problem. A pension plan creates financial claims on behalf of employees. The Social Security Act of 1935 had a profound effect on private pension plans because it profoundly changed the employer’s pension problem. The tax rules for retirement plans reduced a high earner’s tax liability. The differences between single-employer and multiemployer pension plans are reviewed. Officials in Congress and the executive branch agreed that federal policy should accommodate pension and welfare-benefit plans.