IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ilrrev/v47y1994i3p439-453.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why Did Male Pension Coverage Decline in the 1980s?

Author

Listed:
  • William E. Even
  • David A. Macpherson

Abstract

This analysis of 1979 and 1988 May Current Population Survey data suggests explanations for why male pension coverage declined during the 1980s, and why the decline was particularly pronounced among young workers. During the 1980s, employment shifted toward jobs with lower pension coverage, and this shift was more pronounced among young workers than among older workers. More important than the reduction in the percentage of workers offered pensions, however, was reduced participation in pension plans. One factor contributing importantly to declining participation rates was the growing share of pensions that were 401 (k) plans; under such plans, participation is more voluntary than it is under other plans, and young workers are more likely than older workers to decline to participate.

Suggested Citation

  • William E. Even & David A. Macpherson, 1994. "Why Did Male Pension Coverage Decline in the 1980s?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 47(3), pages 439-453, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:47:y:1994:i:3:p:439-453
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ilr.sagepub.com/content/47/3/439.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Wolff, Edward N., 2007. "The retirement wealth of the baby boom generation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 1-40, January.
    2. Edward N. Wolff, 2011. "Pensions in the 2000s: the Lost Decade?," NBER Working Papers 16991, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Garen, John & Berger, Mark & Scott, Frank, 1996. "Pensions, non-discrimination policies, and the employment of older workers," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 417-429.
    4. Kathleen M. McGarry & Andrew Davenport, 1998. "Pensions and the Distribution of Wealth," NBER Chapters, in: Frontiers in the Economics of Aging, pages 463-486, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Bela Szemely, 2013. "Explaining the Decline of the U.S. Saving Rate: the Joint Role of Health Expenditure and Employer Contributions," 2013 Meeting Papers 93, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Alicia H. Munnell & Laura Quinby, 2009. "Pension Coverage and Retirement Security," Issues in Brief ib2009-9-26, Center for Retirement Research, revised Dec 2009.
    7. Edward N. Wolff, 2015. "U.S. Pensions in the 2000s: The Lost Decade?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(4), pages 599-629, December.
    8. Thomas L. Hungerford, 2003. "U.S. Workers' Investment Decisions for Participant-Directed Defined Contribution Pension Assets," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_375, Levy Economics Institute.
    9. Teresa Ghilarducci & Joelle Saad-Lessler, 2014. "Explaining the Decline in the OfFer Rate of Employer Retirement Plans Between 2001-2012," SCEPA working paper series. 2014-2, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.
    10. Di Gialleonardo, Luca & Marè, Mauro & Motroni, Antonello & Porcelli, Francesco, 2016. "The impact of financial crisis on savings decisions: evidences from Italian pension funds," MPRA Paper 76066, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Jul 2016.

    More about this item

    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:sae:ilrrev:v:47:y:1994:i:3:p:439-453. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu .

    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.