Urban Institute projections suggest the stock market collapse will have small effects on most Americans' retirement incomes. It's estimated that 37 percent of Americans born between 1941 and 1965 owned no stocks when the market crashed in 2008 and that income from assets will account for a small share of retirement income, even for those with stocks. For most retirees, Social Security provides the majority of income. Had Social Security been invested in private accounts with equities, the impact of the crash would have been much larger—positive or negative, depending on one's birth cohort and on future market performance.

One-quarter of workers ages 51 to 55 develop work disabilities before age 62. Disabilities often force people to curtail their work hours, derailing retirement preparations. However, protections built into Social Security, including disability and spouse benefits and the system's tilt toward workers with low lifetime earnings, cushion the impact of midlife health problems. After other factors are controlled for, the onset of health-related work limitations between ages 51 and 61 reduces Social Security retirement benefits at ages 63 to 67 by only about 2 percent, much less than the impact on other retirement savings.

Low-wage workers find it difficult to save for retirement. Without savings, they will have to rely on Social Security and pensions. Yet these income sources are based on earnings, which means that low-wage workers will have lower Social Security and pension benefits than higher-wage workers. This brief assesses whether boomers with low earnings between ages 22 and 62 are destined for low income at age 67. We find that nearly two-thirds of this group will end up with low income at retirement, but more than one-third will manage to defy the odds and escape being among the lowest-income older Americans.

Employment is now less physically demanding and less likely to entail difficult working conditions than before, a trend that might spur employment at older ages. However, the shift to a knowledge-based economy has increased cognitive demands and placed a premium on mastering the latest technical skills. Between 1971 and 2006 the share of workers in cognitively demanding jobs (requiring such skills as reasoning, writing, and decisionmaking) increased from 25.7 to 34.8 percent. This development may curtail opportunities for older workers with limited education or those who lack recent training.

The Census Bureau’s official poverty measure no longer reflects the true resources or needs of adults age 65 and older. Recent consumption data show that older adults generally require more to cover their basic needs and economic data show that older adults have more resources than are reflected in the official poverty measure. This paper shows the sensitivity of poverty rates for older adults to alternative measures of consumption needs and income resources. The alternative measures all show that number of older adults living in poverty is greater than the official measure indicates.