IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aei/journl/y2015id836449.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why Americans don't face a retirement crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew G. Biggs

    (American Enterprise Institute)

  • Sylvester J. Schieber

Abstract

There is no question that many Americans face challenges in preparing for retirement. Social Security is substantially underfunded, its long-term shortfalls are increasing, and policymakers have not made reform a priority. Nonetheless, analysts' claims that Americans face a "retirement crisis" overstate what households will need in retirement, fail to account for how the presence of children in a household affects the need to save, and incorrectly point to households' declining wealth-to-income ratios as a sign of deteriorating retirement saving. A careful review of data and retirement studies reveals that the state of retirement preparedness is in fact a more modest, manageable issue. A false sense of crisis risks enacting policies that could have significant costs for government budgets and ordinary Americans' retirement security. In particular, government-run pension programs are the most poorly funded element of overall retirement saving. Policies that would make Americans more dependent on these programs could put their retirement income security at risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew G. Biggs & Sylvester J. Schieber, 2015. "Why Americans don't face a retirement crisis," AEI Economic Perspectives, American Enterprise Institute, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:aei:journl:y:2015:id:836449
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aei.org/publication/why-americans-dont-face-a-retirement-crisis
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrew G. Biggs & Sylvester J. Schieber & Gaobo Pang, 2015. "Measuring and communicating Social Security earnings replacement rates," AEI Economics Working Papers 826926, American Enterprise Institute.
    2. Attanasio, Orazio P & Browning, Martin, 1995. "Consumption over the Life Cycle and over the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1118-1137, December.
    3. Amy Finkelstein & Erzo F. P. Luttmer & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2013. "What Good Is Wealth Without Health? The Effect Of Health On The Marginal Utility Of Consumption," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11, pages 221-258, January.
    4. Robert H. Frank, 2005. "Positional Externalities Cause Large and Preventable Welfare Losses," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 137-141, May.
    5. David A. Love, 2010. "The Effects of Marital Status and Children on Savings and Portfolio Choice," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(1), pages 385-432, January.
    6. Susann Rohwedder, 2006. "Self-Assessed Retirement Outcomes: Determinants and Pathways," Working Papers wp141, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    7. Norma B. Coe & Anthony Webb, 2010. "Children and Household Utility: Evidence from Kids Flying the Coop," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2010-15, Center for Retirement Research, revised Nov 2010.
    8. Alicia H. Munnell & Wenliang Hou & Anthony Webb, 2014. "NRRI Update Shows Half Still Falling Short," Issues in Brief ib2014-20, Center for Retirement Research.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John Chalmers & Olivia S. Mitchell & Jonathan Reuter & Mingli Zhong, 2021. "Auto-Enrollment Retirement Plans in OregonSaves," Working Papers wp425, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    2. John Chalmers & Olivia S. Mitchell & Jonathan Reuter & Mingli Zhong, 2021. "Auto-Enrollment Retirement Plans for the People: Choices and Outcomes in OregonSaves," NBER Working Papers 28469, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Klos, Alexander & Rottke, Simon, 2013. "Saving and Consumption When Children Move Out," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79786, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. repec:aei:rpaper:1008549131 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Congressional Budget Office, 2017. "Measuring the Adequacy of Retirement Income: A Primer," Reports 53191, Congressional Budget Office.
    4. Padmaja Ayyagari & Daifeng He, 2017. "The Role of Medical Expenditure Risk in Portfolio Allocation Decisions," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(11), pages 1447-1458, November.
    5. Andrew G. Biggs, 2016. "The Life Cycle Model, Replacement Rates, and Retirement Income Adequacy," AEI Economics Working Papers 900377, American Enterprise Institute.
    6. Doepke, M. & Tertilt, M., 2016. "Families in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1789-1891, Elsevier.
    7. Andrew Grant & Steve Satchell, 2019. "Endogenous divorce risk and investment," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 32(3), pages 845-876, July.
    8. Thomas H. Jørgensen, 2014. "Life-Cycle Consumption and Children," CAM Working Papers 2014_02, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Applied Microeconometrics.
    9. Thomas H. Jørgensen, 2017. "Life-Cycle Consumption and Children: Evidence from a Structural Estimation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 79(5), pages 717-746, October.
    10. Kaschützke, B. & Maurer, R., 2016. "Investing and Portfolio Allocation for Retirement," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 567-608, Elsevier.
    11. Simon Rottke & Alexander Klos, 2016. "Savings and Consumption When Children Move Out," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 20(6), pages 2349-2377.
    12. Athanasopoulos, George & de Carvalho Guillén, Osmani Teixeira & Issler, João Victor & Vahid, Farshid, 2011. "Model selection, estimation and forecasting in VAR models with short-run and long-run restrictions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 164(1), pages 116-129, September.
    13. Thomas F. Crossley & Hamish W. Low, 2011. "Is The Elasticity Of Intertemporal Substitution Constant?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 87-105, February.
    14. Anikó Bíró, 2013. "Subjective mortality hazard shocks and the adjustment of consumption expenditures," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(4), pages 1379-1408, October.
    15. Grossmann, Volker & Larin, Benjamin & Löfflad, Hans Torben & Steger, Thomas, 2021. "Distributional consequences of surging housing rents," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    16. Robson, Matthew & O’Donnell, Owen & Van Ourti, Tom, 2024. "Aversion to health inequality — Pure, income-related and income-caused," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    17. Tatiane Menezes & R. Silveira-Neto & Carlos Azzoni, 2012. "Demography and evolution of regional inequality," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 49(3), pages 643-655, December.
    18. Aydilek, Asiye, 2016. "The allocation of time and puzzling profiles of the elderly," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 515-526.
    19. van Hoorn, André, 2018. "Is the happiness approach to measuring preferences valid?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 53-65.
    20. Kárpáti, D.;, 2022. "Household Finance and Life-Cycle Economic Decisions under the Shadow of Cancer," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 22/16, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    21. Galama, Titus & Kapteyn, Arie, 2011. "Grossman’s missing health threshold," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 1044-1056.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Retirement; AEI Economic Perspectives;

    JEL classification:

    • A - General Economics and Teaching

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aei:journl:y:2015:id:836449. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dave Adams, CIO (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeiiius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.