April 25, 2007
Featured Topics:
Fact at a Glance: From 1994 to 2004, the median amount that retirees ages 55 to 63 paid in premiums for employer-provided health insurance more than quadrupled, after adjusting for inflation. (Read more in "
What Happens to Health Benefits After Retirement?")
Upcoming Event
"Who Will Pay for Boomers' Long Term Care?"
Tuesday, May 1, 2007 | noon-1:30 p.m.
Panelists will discuss the many challenges of providing long-term care to frail older adults and address such questions as:
- What are the financial burdens of caring for family members? How will demographic shifts affect families’ abilities to provide care?
- How will the demand for paid services evolve? What will be the impact on Medicare, Medicaid, and families?
- What roles should government and private insurance play in providing long-term care services?
- What new policies would better meet long-term care needs?
Susan Dentzer, health correspondent with The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, will moderate the discussion with Susan Coronel of America's Health Insurance Plans, Richard Johnson of the Urban Institute, John Rother of AARP, and Matt Salo of the National Governors Association.
Lunch will be provided at 11:45 a.m. Seating is limited. To RSVP, e-mail paffairs@ui.urban.org, call (202) 261-5709, or register online.
Recent Publications
How Economic Security Changes During Retirement
More than two-fifths of retirees will have significantly less income at age 80 than they did at 67 (median income decline of $16,000 for current retirees and $23,000 for boomers). However, approximately two-fifths will have significantly more income at age 80 than at 67 (median income increase of $14,000 for current retirees and $17,000 for boomers). Some of the shift in economic well-being is related to changes in living arrangements, marital status, health, and work.
(Full Report)
Job Changes at Older Ages: Effects on Wages, Benefits, and Other Job Attributes
Despite the attraction of work at older ages, questions persist about the availability and quality of jobs for older Americans. This study examines older adults' employment opportunities by studying job changes at ages 45 to 75. Many older workers move to new occupations and industries when they switch jobs, often assuming positions that involve less stress and physical effort. Although most older job changers enjoy their new jobs, they generally experience sharp hourly wage reductions and often lose pension coverage and health benefits. The findings highlight the special labor market challenges faced by older displaced workers.
(Full Report)
Social Security Spouse and Survivor Benefits for the Modern Family
Social Security spouse and survivor benefits advantage single-earner families relative to dual-earner families paying the same total taxes. This paper considers earnings sharing -- through which a husband's and a wife's earnings are combined and averaged throughout their marriage to compute benefits -- as well as other changes to spouse and survivor benefits, such as caregiver credits and minimum benefits. All the roughly cost-equivalent packages examined improve adequacy and horizontal equity compared to current law, but the earnings-sharing proposal only reduced poverty with significant adjustments to the treatment of surviving spouses. The packages reveal tradeoffs among beneficiary groups, with particular tensions around work and marital status.
(Full Report)
Annuitized Wealth and Consumption at Older Ages
The growing popularity of individual retirement accounts and defined contribution (DC) pension plans, which generally provide lump sum payments instead of annuities, will likely affect spending at older ages. Retirees with little annuitized wealth risk spending too quickly and depleting their assets before they die, or spending too slowly and not enjoying as comfortable a retirement as they could afford. This study finds that older adults with little annuitized wealth do spend more, implying that the shift from defined benefit pensions to DC pensions or privatizing Social Security without requiring annuitization may promote even further spending of retirement resources.
(Full Report | Brief Summary)
What Happens to Health Benefits After Retirement?
Because most workers receive health benefits from their employers, retirement often disrupts health insurance coverage. This brief examines the availability and cost of health insurance at ages 55 to 64 and changes in coverage after retirement. Today most workers with employer health benefits retain their coverage when they retire early, although their required premium contributions have increased sharply over the past 10 years. In the future, however, steady declines in the share of younger workers with access to retiree health benefits may jeopardize income security for the next generation of retirees.
(Full Report)
Presentations
Urban Institute researchers have given the following presentations:
- April 13 - Richard Johnson spoke about employer attitudes toward older workers at a conference cosponsored by the University of Miami.
- March 29 - Richard Johnson discussed how aged parents provide financial assistance to their adult children at the Population Association of America's annual meeting.
- March 27 - Richard Johnson spoke about health care risks at the InvestmentNews 2007 Retirement Income Summit.
- March 13 - Melissa Favreault spoke about distributional modeling of Social Security, with a focus on the Urban Institute's DYNASIM microsimulation model, to the Social Security Advisory Board.
- January 30 - C. Eugene Steuerle provided testimony to the U.S. Senate Budget Committee on defining our long-term fiscal challenges (view testimony).
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