Excerpt: Policy debates about the appropriate risk levels for individual retirement plans and social retirement plans (like social security) often pay insufficient attention to the inescapable trade-off between 'payment risk' (the risk of insufficient funding for anticipated benefits) and 'short fall risk' (the risk of insufficient benefits for a satisfactory retirement). Thus a 'prudent retiree rule' would permit a prudent level of 'contingent funding' of retirement payouts.  MORE >>