Böcker av Alicia H. Munnell

"From a modest beginning in 1935 to an income replacement scheme for workers in commerce and industry, the social security system has grown to cover 90 percent of working Americans. It now pays $78 billion a year in benefits and is obligated to pay $4 trillion in future retirement benefits to workers now covered. With a projected tax rate of 30 percent of gross wages by the year 2050 to meet its obligations under current law, the system, in the author's words, is at ""the most crucial juncture of its forty-year life.""This comprehensive review and analysis, the thirteenth in the Brookings series of Studies in Social Economics, discusses social security in relation to other sources of retirement income and clarifies its financing problem, benefit structure, and ambivalent goals. It deals with two main financing questions. First, will the payroll tax yield the revenue needed to pay benefits as the retired population rises as a fraction of the working population? Second, is the regressive social security tax really the best source of revenue for a system with welfare components such as the minimum benefit and dependents' benefits? Though such benefits are viewed as progressive, they are not paid according to need. They meet neither the income redistribution requirements nor the individual equity goals of the social security program. The author provides a comprehensive account of the benefit structure and clarifies its relation not only to the basic goals of social security but also to the country's three-tiered system of income security. She offers recommendations for eliminating ""an irrational and correctable feature of the benefit formula,"" for lowering the dependency ratio, and, most important, for a definition of goals."

In the wake of the financial crisis and Great Recession, the health of state and local pension plans has emerged as a front burner policy issue. In this book, the author draws on both her practical experience and her research to provide a broad perspective on the challenge of state and local pensions.

Daily headlines warn American workers that their retirement years may be far from golden. The main components of the retirement income system -Social Security and employer-provided pensions and health insurance -are in decline while the amount of income needed for a comfortable retirement continues to rise.

This book, part of the Studies in Social Economics series, examines old age pensions in the United States. Alicia H. Munnell explores the factors that have influenced the growth of private pension plans.