Related UI Researchers

Publications on Retirees/Seniors

With nearly 300,000 Americans age 65 and older out of work, the recession is hitting older workers hard. Old-age unemployment rates are increasing more rapidly than in most previous downturns. This fact sheet provides the latest numbers on the employment situation for older Americans.

Americans save for retirement by building wealth in personal accounts, home equity, pension plans, retirement accounts and Social Security. We use data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and methods to estimate the wealth values of Social Security and pension plans to show how wealth builds over the life cycle. We find that the typical household accrues wealth throughout the life cycle. Households in the bottom income quintile, those that did not complete high school and minorities accumulate much less wealth than their counterparts, and Social Security accounts for a large share of their preretirement wealth.

For older workers, this recession is unprecedented. Retirement expert Richard Johnson explains why and what should be done to cushion its impact on seniors who want to work.

The stock market lost 47 percent of its value between September 30, 2007 and December 2, 2008, a roughly $11 trillion drop. The loss has reduced the retirement savings of many Americans, particularly older adults. This fact sheet examines the impact of the ongoing economic turmoil on older households and presents estimates of the retirement account losses to date.

This paper estimates the ratio of post- to pre-retirement consumption to explore how well boomers are prepared for retirement. I show that some of the poorest households are best prepared because they can maintain consumption by relying almost solely on Social Security while many of the most affluent households are poorly prepared because they will experience a decline in consumption upon retiring. Nonetheless, affluent households will be able to maintain a consumption level many times that of poor households. The paper discusses whether equalization of pre- and post-retirement consumption provides a useful adequacy yardstick at all income levels.