Headlines about "Social Security - reform"

Gathered from the web by the editors at BenefitsLink.com.
Fixing Social Security: Adequate Benefits, Adequate Financing
Excerpt: "The purpose of this report is to help analysts, policymakers, journalists, constituent organizations, and interested citizens consider how to bring SocialSecurity into long-range balance in ways that address concerns about benefit adequacy. The report outlines approximately 30 options for putting Social Security's finances into 75-year balance and more than 10 ways to make Social Security more adequate for those who rely on it. All options have long-range cost estimates from Social Security actuaries. Benefit adequacy options in the report target such financially vulnerable groups as: The oldest beneficiaries (over 85 years); Widowed spouses of low-earning couples; Low-paid workers generally; Workers with gaps in paid work due to childcare; and Students in college or vocational school who have lost parental support due to death or disability. Other adequacy options would increase benefits across the board for current and future beneficiaries." (National Academy of Social Insurance)

Few Options Remain to Repair Social Security System
Excerpt: "Some people have said that, given the weight of its other financial obligations, the federal government will be forced to renege on its Social Security obligations. But experts, both liberal and conservative, say that scenario is highly unlikely. 'The problem is really the government as a whole is in a deficit position. That doesn't mean they won't meet that particular commitment, but the question of how we're going to meet all of our commitments fiscally is kind of up in the air,' said Eric Toder, an institute fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington. 'I don't think that's one they're likely to default on.' Still, people paying into the system now are highly likely to get less than is being promised." (The Tribune-Review Publishing Co.)

Issue Brief on Understanding Assumptions Used to Evaluate Social Security's Financial Condition (PDF)
This issue brief describes the major assumptions used in projections of Social Security's financial condition and how variations in the assumptions affect the results. (American Academy of Actuaries)

Social Security's Future and Your Retirement
Excerpt: "By 2037, the trustees reported, the surplus in the Social Security trust fund will be completely spent, which is four years sooner than the estimate in last year's trustees report. At that point, Social Security tax collections would be sufficient to pay only 76% of promised benefits, according to the trustees' estimate. [Vanguard] asked Olivia S. Mitchell, Ph.D., one of the world's foremost authorities on pensions and retirement, to explain Social Security's looming funding shortfall and the implications it has for future retirees." (The Vanguard Group, Inc.)

Americans Agree on How to Fix Social Security, According to Survey
Excerpt: "A survey conducted jointly by the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Academy of Social Insurance found that 90% of Americans are concerned about the program's ability to pay benefits for the next generation. Because these same people believe strongly that workers should have financial security in their retirement, most want Social Security's finances strengthened. . . . The most striking finding in the survey is that most Americans are willing to pay higher payroll taxes to preserve the Social Security program. When asked to respond to the statement: 'It is critical that we preserve Social Security for future generations, even if it means increasing working Americans' contributions to Social Security,' 77% of those surveyed said they agreed . . . ." (Economic Policy Institute)

Social Security Reform: How Different Options Might Affect Future Funding (PDF)
Pages 13-18 of 20 pages. Excerpt: "This article analyzes various potential reform provisions that have been widely discussed that would affect the benefit levels and program revenues of Social Security. This analysis also discusses the potential impact of these provisions on the financial status of the OASDI program. The provisions discussed are those that would: Lower the scheduled increase in future benefit levels by changes to the benefit formula. Change the contribution and benefit base (amount of earnings that are taxable and used for the calculation of benefits under OASDI) and the taxation of benefits. Increase the retirement age. All of these approaches have been part of various comprehensive reform proposals over the last two decades." (Employee Benefit Research Institute)

Economic Crisis Fuels Support for Social Security: Americans' Views on Social Security (PDF)
23 pages. Excerpt: "This report highlights findings from a poll jointly sponsored by the National Academy of Social Insurance and the Rockefeller Foundation's Campaign for American Workers Initiative. The poll of 1,488 Americans, conducted between July 7-14 by the Benenson Strategy Group, sends a strong message to policymakers about the value that Americans place on Social Security benefits for themselves and the country as a whole." (National Academy of Social Insurance)

Should Social Security Rely Solely on the Payroll Tax?
Excerpt: "This brief explores the question of the appropriate tax, or combination of taxes, to finance Social Security. Since the need for more revenues gives the question increased currency, the first section briefly describes Social Security's financial outlook. The second section then describes the payroll tax. The third section explores whether the whole cost of the Social Security system ? the contributions necessary to generate current benefits and the contributions required to make up for giving early participants benefits far in excess of their contributions ? should be financed in the same way. The fourth section concludes that perhaps a portion of Social Security financing could be transferred from the payroll tax to the income tax. It would mean higher income taxes, but the burden of the 'legacy debt' would be borne more broadly." (Center for Retirement Research at Boston College)

[Opinion] Why Social Security Needs Some Major Repairs
Excerpt: "I've been writing about Social Security's problems for more than a decade, arguing that having the government borrow several trillion dollars to bail out the program so it can pay its promised benefits would impose an intolerable burden on our public finances. But I've changed my mind about what 'intolerable' means. With the government spending untold trillions to bail out incompetent banks and the auto industry, it should damn well bail out Social Security recipients, too. But in a smart way." (The Washington Post; free registration required)

Distributional Effects of Raising the Social Security Taxable Maximum (PDF)
8 pages. Excerpt: "This policy brief analyzes the effects on taxpayers and Social Security beneficiaries of either eliminating the taxable maximum (tax max) for Social Security or raising it to a level so that 90 percent of all Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI)?covered earnings would be subject to the payroll tax. Under both scenarios it is possible to either calculate benefits based on the current-law tax max (no max and max 90) or to credit the new taxable amounts toward benefits (no max plus benefits and max 90 plus benefits)." (U.S. Social Security Administration)

[Opinion] Social Security Reform May Happen Now
Excerpt: "Add the possibility of Social Security reform to the continuing likelihood of healthcare reform, and HR leaders have workforce-planning issues of substantial complexity to work through -- including the possibility that workers will remain on the job longer." (Dallas Salisbury via Human Resource Executive Online)

Hearing on Social Security: Keeping the Promise in the 21st Century
June 17, 2009. Excerpt: From Senator Herb Kohl, Chairman. 'We all know that health care reform is the number one priority of the administration and of my colleagues here in the Senate. But with an urgent need to contain the federal deficit, there is no doubt that sometime soon all eyes will turn to Social Security. When that time comes, this committee wants to be prepared to act as a repository of ideas for reform proposals. As our witnesses will confirm today, Social Security can be strengthened, benefits for those who need them most can be increased, and long-term solvency can be ensured with just a few, small common-sense changes." (U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging)

[Opinion] Social Security in Better Shape Than Medicare, But Wave of Baby Boomer Retirements Will Change That
Excerpt: "In our view, the Social Security trust fund projections are extremely solid at this point. Numbers could change slightly because of inflation and cost-of-living adjustments, but any reduction in benefits would likely be matched by reduced revenues because of lower wage growth. The underlying problem is that today there are five workers for every retiree; in 20 years, there will only be three." (Standard & Poor's RatingsDirect via BusinessWeek)

An Actuarial Perspective on the 2009 Social Security Trustees' Report (PDF)
7 pages. Excerpt: "To bring [Social Security] income and outgo into balance, Congress needs to act reasonably soon. A primary goal of Social Security reform should be sustainable solvency, setting the program on a path toward paying benefits when due for the next 75 years and beyond. With retirees living longer and longer, the American Academy of Actuaries has recommended that increasing the retirement age be a part of any reform proposal." (American Academy of Actuaries)

[Opinion] Securing Social Security: Lessons for the Next Debate
Excerpt: "This commentary suggests ways of making the upcoming debate on Social Security reform more productive than some past efforts. Participants must be open to a range of solutions, financing must be transparent, and effects on disabled workers must be addressed. Reform efforts must acknowledge the changing economic environment, including increasing wage inequality, and shifting individual and family demographics. Guaranteed inflation-protected benefits are crucial, and the sacrifices necessary to balance the system should be shared across generations[.]" (The Urban Institute)

Lawmakers Seeking Consensus on Social Security Overhaul
Excerpt: "Key lawmakers from both parties have held tentative talks about overhauling the Social Security system, and Congress could turn its attention to the federal retirement program as soon as this fall if a bipartisan consensus emerges, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said yesterday. . . . So far, Democrats have found a willing partner in the Senate, where Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) has stated his desire to work with President Obama to make changes to keep Social Security solvent. Projections show that the system, which has brought in more money than it pays out, will begin to need at least small infusions of cash from the rest of the government within the next decade without changes to the benefit structure." (The Washington Post; free registration required)

Why Raising the Social Security Retirement Age Is Not the Answer for Reform (PDF)
21 pages. Excerpt: "Raising the earliest eligibility age may seem to be a solution to the problem of inadequate retirement incomes. Delaying retirement would increase early retirees' monthly benefits while keeping lifetime benefits the same. However, raising the early retirement age would disproportionately hurt lower-income workers and minorities, many of whom have little choice but to stop working in their early 60s due to poor health and job prospects. These workers have not seen significant gains in life expectancy and typically spend fewer years in retirement. Furthermore, raising the early retirement age would do nothing to improve the system's finances because it does not change retirees' lifetime benefits." (Economic Policy Institute)

Employment Support for the Transition to Retirement: Can a New Program Help Older Workers Continue to Work and Protect Those Who Cannot?
Excerpt: "One of the leading proposals to extend working lives is to increase the earliest eligibility age in Social Security. The major problem with raising the EEA is that doing so would inflict real hardship on some older workers. In this research paper . . ., David Stapleton of Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. proposes a new program could help 'break the deadlock' that stymies efforts to adopt policies that encourage later retirement. Stapleton describes a program -- Employment Support for the Transition to Retirement (ESTR) -- that could address the harm that an increase in the earliest eligibility age might inflict on some older workers. Stapleton identifies a number of circumstances that he says would call for expanded assistance for workers nearing retirement if early benefits were no longer available, and calls for a wide range of benefits, tailored to individual need . . . ." (AARP)

[Opinion] Reform Retirement and Restore Confidence in U.S.
Excerpt: "[President] Barack Obama should develop a plan to provide American consumers and foreign lenders with confidence about this nation's economic future. He should start with a dramatic reformation of Social Security and how Americans save for retirement. This has the dual benefit of putting Social Security on more viable footing and providing Americans with a more stable financial future. The new plan would be a cross between 401(k) plans and pension plans. The 'hybrid' plan would replace the current 401(k) system and require employees to invest in large commingled asset pools structured and managed like traditional pension funds. These pools would be managed by professionals and have the necessary economies of scale to provide more stable long-term investment returns with lower fees and costs. These are the best features of traditional pension funds. However, the plan would also have critical aspects of 401(k) plans -- namely, portability and the risk of loss would remain with the employee." (The Houston Chronicle)

The Actuarial Balance of the Pay-as-You-Go Pension System: 'American' Model versus 'Swedish' Model
Excerpt: "The aim of this paper is to show the advisability of making it compulsory to draw up an actuarial balance in pay-as-you-go pension systems so as to improve their transparency and solvency. This is in line with the trend seen in some developed countries of trying to introduce actuarial analysis methodology into the field of public pay-as-you-go pension system management. The paper also aims to shed some light on the two main methods used by government Social Security departments to draw up the actuarial balance, focusing especially on their methodology and actuarial issues." (Social Science Research Network)

The Future of Social Security: Principles to Guide Reform
Excerpt: "Reform of the Social Security system appears inevitable. The only questions are how and when. This Article discusses the principles that should guide reform. It begins by describing Robert Ball's 'nine guiding principles' underlying the current Social Security system. It then identifies the seven principles that should guide reform of the system. The principles call for retaining Social Security's fundamental structure but gradually introducing changes on both the revenue and benefit side so as to distribute the burden of reform widely across and within generations. Beyond that, the principles offer considerable flexibility in the final details of reform. " (Social Science Research Network)

A New Minimum Social Security Benefit for Low Lifetime Earners
Excerpt: "Despite working hard and playing by the rules over long periods, many workers end up poor in retirement. We propose an enhanced minimum benefit for Social Security that targets long-career workers with low lifetime earnings along with a modest credit that compensates workers for up to three years out of the labor market due to caregiving, unemployment, or poor health. By combining these elements, the proposal provides work incentives, yet recognizes realities facing low-wage workers, many of whom have had intermittent work careers. We show that these proposed enhancements would allow more adults to retire with a secure financial foothold." (The Urban Institute)

[Opinion] Principles for a New Retirement System in the USA (PDF)
49 pages. Excerpt: "Retirement USA is an initiative developed by organizations representing workers and retirees that are committed to working for a universal, secure, and adequate private retirement system for the future that supplements Social Security. The organizations launching the initiative are the Economic Policy Institute, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, the Pension Rights Center, and the Service Employees International Union. This working paper documents the need for a new system, details principles that should guide the development of a new system, and provides examples of plans and proposals that incorporate these principles." (Retirement USA)

U.S. Births Break Baby Boom Record
Excerpt: "The 4,317,119 births, reported by federal researchers Wednesday, topped a record first set in 1957 at the height of the baby boom. . . . On average, a U.S. woman has 2.1 babies in her lifetime. That's the 'magic number' required for a population to replace itself. Countries with much lower rates -- such as Japan and Italy -- face future labor shortages and eroding tax bases as they fail to reproduce enough to take care of their aging elders." (AP via ChicagoTribune.com)

[Opinion] Pension Busts and Market Booms Ahead as World Rides the Demographic Wave:
Excerpt: "The idea that aging will have a profoundly negative impact on the global economy has been around for decades but has been dismissed or taken a back seat to other more 'important' problems. Unfortunately, all the years spent avoiding the aging & pension problem has served to magnify the issue." (RGE Monitor)

Labor Supply Elasticity and Social Security Reform
Excerpt: "Previous literature on social security reform has used a variety of period utility functions and calibrated values for the intertemporal elasticity of substitution (IES) in labor. In this paper, we extensively study various preferences and values for IES in a general equilibrium model with overlapping generations. We calibrate the model to key U.S. macroeconomic indicators and document how social security reform impacts the economy under different preferences." (Center for Retirement Research at Boston College)

Social Security Financing: Automatic Adjustments to Restore Solvency
Excerpt: "This paper describes the various automatic stabilizing mechanisms and explains how they have been adopted in 12 countries. It appears likely that automatic adjustment mechanisms adopted in Sweden and Japan will succeed, whereas those adopted in Italy and Germany have already been overridden. Because these mechanisms are relatively new, it is not clear how well they will work in the long run. Nevertheless, the experience of these 12 countries provides useful insights on the potential design features of auto-stabilization mechanisms and what their effects might be if implemented in the U.S." (AARP)

Obama Finds Resistance in His Party on Addressing Social Security
Excerpt: "President Obama is eager to seek a bipartisan solution to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security, people who have spoken with him say, but he is running into opposition from his party's left and from Democratic Congressional leaders who contend that his political capital would be better spent on health care and other priorities." (The New York Times; free registration required)

[Opinion] We Need Health Care Reform, Not an Entitlements Commission
Excerpt: "In response to pressure from Blue Dog Democrats, the administration is hosting a 'fiscal responsibility summit' on February 23. Though it remains unclear what will come out of this process, some press reports, notably a Wall Street Journal article, claim the president 'gave the nod' to an entitlements commission whose recommendations would be put to an up-down vote before Congress. This may be premature, but it has caused understandable dismay among advocates gearing up for a universal health care offensive who now face the prospect of again playing defense on Social Security. We hope that the president will reject the idea of bypassing Congress, and use the occasion of the summit to make clear that we do not have a fiscal deficit problem so much as a problem of spiraling health care costs throughout the economy, not just in government programs like Medicare and Medicaid." (Economic Policy Institute)

Welfare and Generational Equity in Sustainable Unfunded Pension Systems
Excerpt: "We evaluate several actual and hypothetical sustainable PAYGO pension structures, including: (1) versions of the US Social Security system with annual adjustments of taxes or benefits to maintain fiscal balance; (2) Sweden's Notional Defined Contribution system and several variants developed to improve fiscal stability; and (3) the German system, which also includes annual adjustments to maintain fiscal balance. For each system, we present descriptive measures of uncertainty in representative outcomes for a typical generation and across generations. We then estimate expected utility for generations based on simplifying assumptions and incorporate these expected utility calculations in an overall social welfare measure. Using a horizontal equity index, we also compare the different systems' performance in terms of how neighboring generations are treated." (National Bureau of Economic Research; paid subscription or individual purchase required to retrieve fulltext)

[Opinion] What to Do About Social Security
Excerpt: "[A] compromise would result in good policy. Social Security needs to be brought into balance, and reasonable spending cuts would do less economic damage than tax increases. Long-term investment is still a good idea for young people. Besides, the ideological divide over 'carve-out' and 'add-on' accounts is absurd: whether the accounts are inside or outside Social Security is largely a question of accounting. And who knows? Cooperation on Social Security could pave the way for bipartisan solutions on everything from tax reform to Medicare, by building good will and showing that such accomplishments are possible." (The New York Times; free registration required)

Sources of Support for Pension Reform: A Cross-National Perspective
Excerpt: "Many accounts of pension politics assign primary importance to societal forces. In the well-known formulation, pensions are the 'third rail' of politics: politicians cannot cut benefits without suffering electoral retribution. In addition, some see the preferences of business as a key determinant of pension policy. This study takes aim at this problem by exploring what factors lead citizens and firms to support public pension systems and various reform efforts." (Center for Retirement Research at Boston College)

[Opinion] We Need to Save Social Security
Excerpt: "First, we must immediately ratchet up the retirement age, in steps over a 20-year span, to 75. People are far healthier and have better medical care than in 1935, so they can be productive far longer. They can retire earlier if they can afford it or if their children choose to help them. Alternatively, they could have the option of retiring at 65 but getting only half what they would get at 75. It's not the most desirable solution, nor will it be the most popular, but it is the only way to save this vital program. Otherwise we are continuing the Ponzi scheme fraud on our young workforce." (The Hill)

Obama Will Try to Fix Social Security, But Options Are Limited
Excerpt: "Mr. Obama is likely to tackle Social Security by the fourth year of his administration, said Mr. Steuerle, a deputy assistant Treasury secretary under President Ronald Reagan. The president-elect could wait until more urgent issues of the economic recovery and the financial bailout are addressed, or he could package some of the proposals together." (Financial Week)

Remaking Social Security from the Ground Up (PDF)
7 pages. Excerpt: "We asked four pension actuaries, knowing what they know today, to redesign Social Security from scratch. Here's what they came up with." (Contingencies)

Social Security Reform: Work Incentives (PDF)
28 pages. Excerpt: "This sixth and final Treasury issue brief on Social Security reform discusses Social Security's effect on work incentives and the implications for reform. Social Security discourages work effort in much the same way as does an ordinary tax on labor income. . . . Two key goals for Social Security reform are to raise more than $13.6 trillion in net taxes from current and future workers fairly and with as little effect as possible on work incentives. This net tax will be assessed under any permanently solvent Social Security system, and will involve some combination of increased revenue and lower benefits relative to what is scheduled under current law." (U.S. Department of the Treasury)

Obama Promises Bid to Overhaul Retiree Entitlement Spending
Excerpt: "President-elect Barack Obama said Wednesday that overhauling Social Security and Medicare would be 'a central part' of his administration's efforts to contain federal spending, signaling for the first time that he would wade into the thorny politics of entitlement programs." (The New York Times; free registration required)

Federal Government Releases FY 2008 Financial Report; Social Security, Medicare Costs Continue to Climb
Excerpt from press release: 'Over the next two decades, Social Security and Medicare expenditures are projected to increase from their current 8 percent of GDP to about 11 percent. Without reform, the cost of these programs is projected to approach 18 percent of GDP by 2080." (Treasury Department; Office of Management and Budget)

[Opinion] A Capitalist's Social Security, 401(k), and Retirement Plan Reform Program
Excerpt: "What if there was an easy way to implement a whole new approach to retirement funding, pension planning, and Social Security? Would the politicians be interested? Let's find out. What if the new plan actually reduced payroll taxes, cut prices, created jobs, increased salaries, raised shareholder dividends, partially funded decreased healthcare costs, and was available to everyone? Sound too good to be true, but it's actually doable." (NewsBlaze)

Pension Reform in Mexico: Effect of Pension Fund Fees on Account Balances
2 pages. Excerpt: "We find that fees drain pension accumulations by up to 25 percent of what would have been accumulated without fees. As a result many individuals, especially of the transition generation, will receive only the minimum pension guarantee because their accumulations will not be sufficient to fund a higher pension. Th e extent of this happening is important to gauge the additional cost to the government. Irrespective of the accumulated pension balances the fees lower well-being during retirement, in some cases significantly so." (Research Retirement Center, University of Michigan)

The Characteristics of Social Security Beneficiaries Who Claim Benefits at the Early Entitlement Age
Excerpt: "The tabulations suggest that, overall, beneficiaries who claim benefits at age 62 are less educated, less healthy, less likely to work in management and professional occupations and more likely to work in physically demanding jobs, and have lower labor market earnings than do individuals who postpone benefit receipt." (AARP)

Are There Opportunities to Increase Social Security Progressivity despite Underfunding?
Excerpt: "This paper reviews why Social Security fails to lift more aged low-wage workers and people of color out of poverty. It examines the payroll tax and benefit formula and reviews literature about OASDI outcomes by race, gender, and earnings level. . . . The paper then [examines] lifetime OASDI redistribution under current law and a trust fund-neutral reform package that would enhance system progressivity and improve outcomes for some vulnerable to retirement poverty. " (Urban Institute)

Distributional Effects of Proposed Reductions in Social Security Cost-of-Living Adjustments
Excerpt: "The effect of the COLA reductions would be cumulative over time, causing benefit reductions to increase the longer benefits are received. Certain groups of beneficiaries who tend to receive benefits for longer than average -- including older beneficiaries, women, whites, widow(er)s, those with higher levels of education and income, and retired disabled individuals -- will experience larger benefit reductions." (Office of Policy, U.S. Social Security Administration)

2009 Policy Resources from EBRI: Facts on Benefits Issues
Excerpt: "Health and retirement issues were prominent in the 2008 election and will be addressed by the new administration and Congress in 2009. To help provide a factual basis of reference for reporters and others involved in these campaign issues, EBRI is providing the following questions and answers about major employee health and retirement benefits. Hotlinks to relevant tables and charts of data are provided at the end of each answer." (Employee Benefit Research Institute)

Argentina Senate Approves State Takeover of Private Pension Funds
Analysts believe the move could protect participants from stock market volatility but that it also might affect the amount of payments at retirement. (AP via New York Times; free registration required)

Designing a New Universal Tier of Retirement Savings to Supplement Social Security and 401(k)s: How Much Risk is Acceptable?
Excerpt: "The brief's key findings are: The financial crisis suggests the need for a new universal tier of retirement saving to supplement Social Security and 401(k)s. If the tier were a defined contribution system, asset levels would vary with market returns and payouts with interest rates. Replacement rates could fluctuate as much as 30 percentage points -- even if everyone invested in an identical target-date fund. An alternative is to guarantee a fixed return, but this return will almost always be lower than that under a target-date fund, and guarantees are not costless." (Center for Retirement Research at Boston College)

Current Financial Crisis Might Pale in Comparison to Looming Social Security Liability
Excerpt: "[T]he deteriorating financial condition of our federal government in the face of skyrocketing health-care costs and the baby-boom retirement could fairly be described as a super-subprime crisis. It would certainly dwarf what we're seeing now." (by David M. Walker, former Comptroller General, on CNN Money)

Our Wobbly Retirement Reality
Excerpt: "While we're fighting to stave off a depression, the looming Social Security crisis can't be ignored. But any change to shore up the system should also ensure that one leg of the retirement stool is structurally strong and guaranteed to keep people from abject poverty." (The Washington Post; free registration required)

How Pension Rules Affect Work and Contribution Patterns: A Behavioral Model of the Chilean Privatized Pension System
Excerpt: "Chile has been at the forefront of pension reform, having switched in 1980 from a pay-as-you-go system to a fully funded privatized accounts system. The Chilean system served as a model for reform in many other Latin American countries and has also been considered by U.S. policy makers as a possible prototype for social security reform. Some of the criticisms of the Chilean system are low coverage rates and contributions rates among certain segments of the population.' (University of Michigan Retirement Research Center)

The Canadian Safety Net for the Elderly (PDF)
15 pages. Excerpt: "Canada's Public Pensions System is widely applauded for reducing poverty among the elderly. This article reviews benefits provided to Canada's older people and compares the Canadian system to the U.S. Supplemental Security Income program. Although Canada's system would probably be judged prohibitively expensive for the United States, the authors argue that there are nevertheless lessons to be learned from the Canadian experience." (U.S. Social Security Administration)

Chile's Next Generation Pension Reform (PDF)
16 pages. Excerpt: "Since its inception in 1981, Chile's system of mandatory individual retirement accounts has become a model for pension reformers around the world. A March 2008 comprehensive pension reform law made major changes that address some key policy challenges including worker coverage, gender equity, pension adequacy, and administrative fees. The cornerstone of the new law sets up a basic universal pension as a supplement to the individual accounts system." (U.S. Social Security Administration)

Argentina's Leftist President Cristina Kirchner Has Signed a Proposal Nationalizing the Country's Private Pension Funds
Excerpt: "The proposal, which must be approved by the country's legislature, was signed by Ms. Kirchner, along with Labor Minister Carlos Tomada and Amando Boudou, the head of the national social security system, ANSES, according to the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times says that under the plan all the assets in individual accounts would be transferred to the state's 'pay as you go' system, and affiliation to the state system would be mandatory, effectively putting an end to the current dual system." (PLANSPONSOR.com; free registration required)

Optimal Taxation and Social Insurance with Endogenous Private Insurance
Excerpt: "This paper characterizes the welfare gains from redistributive taxation and social insurance in an environment where the private sector provides partial insurance. We analyze stylized models in which adverse selection, pre-existing information, or imperfect optimization in private insurance markets create a role for government intervention. We derive simple formulas that map reduced-form empirical estimates into quantitative predictions for optimal tax and social insurance policy. Applications to unemployment and health insurance show that taking private market insurance into account matters significantly for optimal benefit levels given existing empirical estimates of the key parameters." (National Bureau of Economic Research; paid subscription or individual purchase required to retrieve fulltext)

Unifying Pension Schemes in Japan: Toward a Single Scheme for Both Civil Servants and Private Employees
Excerpt: "A topic of long-standing discussion in Japan has been how to equitably merge the retirement plans for civil servants and private employees, which in the past have been managed separately. Recent legislation sought to unify social security pension schemes for all employees, by extending the coverage of the Japanese Employees' Pension Insurance Scheme which covers private employees to include civil servants as well. We describe how Japanese social security pension schemes have evolved, the forces driving the merger of these plans, and what future prospects may be." (Pension Research Council; registration required to download fulltext of paper)

[Opinion] Avoiding the Tough Issues: The Candidates on Health Care and Entitlements
Excerpt: "Wharton faculty say the candidates have done a better job of clarifying their positions on these difficult issues than their predecessors in prior elections. Still, they add, Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and John McCain of Arizona fall short of laying out richly detailed plans to solve the deep, structural problems with these programs, mainly because there are no easy solutions and speaking hard truths is likely to alienate voters." (Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania)

Small Business Owners Want Control of their Social Security Accounts
Excerpt: "A news release about the survey commissioned by ING DIRECT's ShareBuilder 401k said the limited retirement plan availability makes small business workers even more reliant on Social Security benefits than their peers at larger companies. When it comes to Social Security, the poll found, two-thirds of small business owners want the opportunity to manage their own accounts. Some 67% of small business owners want their Social Security dollars automatically placed into a personal account while 33% would rather have an account that's managed and distributed by the government." (PLANSPONSOR.com; free registration required)

Reforms to an Individual Account Pension System and their Effects on Work and Contribution Decisions: The Case of Chile
Excerpt: "This study evaluates the effect of Chile's pension system rules and regulations on individuals' contribution and working decisions. In 1980 Chile was the first country to switch from a pay-as-you-go system to a privatized system based on individual investment accounts; then it has since been a model for pension reforms in many other Latin American countries." (Pension Research Council; registration required to download fulltext of paper)

[Opinion] Does Anyone Still Want to Privatize Social Security?
Excerpt: "[Dean] Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research reports that 'according to a recent World Bank analysis, the financial industry pocketed 15-20 percent of the money paid into the privatized Social Security system in Chile, which has often been held up as a model by privatizers in the United States. Given the losses that the millionaire Wall Street bozos have incurred with the housing crash,' it is clear that privatization would help those 'very rich needy.'" (The Century Foundation)

General Health Insurance System Established in Turkey
Excerpt: "A new social security and general health insurance law is expected to provide basic health services to the Turkish population. The changes will come into effect on October 1, 2008." (Watson Wyatt Worldwide)

[Opinion] Social Security and Private Savings Have Complementary Roles
Excerpt: "This brief explains the complementary roles of Social Security and voluntary personal savings. Social Security is insurance against the vagaries of retirement (including income-eroding inflation in old age), disability, and the death of a family worker. As insurance, it is about community: everyone shares the risks; and benefits go to those who experience insured losses. Savings, in contrast, are liquid assets that can generally be spent for any purpose at any time." (National Academy of Social Insurance)

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