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This chapter assesses Baby Boom retirement prospects, comparing the outlook for this cohort with experiences of previous generations. The impact of aging is assessed using the Social Security's Model of Income in the Near Term and project retirement incomes for a representative group of individuals born between 1926 and 1965. Results indicate that Baby Boomers can expect to have higher real incomes and lower poverty rates in retirement than current retirees. However, the gains in family income are not equally distributed: for instance, never-married Boomer women will be relatively better off while high school Boomer dropouts will be relatively worse off than current retirees. Boomers' post-retirement incomes are not predicted to rise as much as pre-retirement incomes. Additionally, certain population subgroups will remain economically vulnerable, including divorced women, never-married men, Hispanics, high school dropouts, those with weak labor force attachments, and those with the lowest lifetime earnings.

This chapter evaluates housing wealth and its potential role in Baby Boomers' retirement wellbeing. The Health and Retirement Survey is used to compare Boomers' wealth position to that of the immediately preceding cohort, just prior to retirement. Results show that Boomers have more valuable homes but have also borrowed more against them, so they have a similar fraction of assets allocated to home equity as their predecessors. Unlike prior studies, this chapter shows that people do view housing as a source of wealth that can help them finance their retirement needs. Indeed, a substantial fraction of older households do move and appear to liquidate some home equity in the process. Consequently, some of the recent home equity extraction may be related to the aging of the population rather than a cyclical response to rapid house appreciation.