Business and Retirement Income – What Role in the Future?

Anna M. Rappaport
President, Anna Rappaport Consulting

I have been very pleased to spend the last few days in Washington, DC and to participate in several meetings about retirement security. On Wednesday, June 17, I joined a group at the National Academy of Social Insurance at “The Quest for Adequate Retirement Income” a symposium focusing on current issues in the retirement system.

On Thursday [July 18th], I had the opportunity to meet with a number of plan sponsors who were discussing challenges in the retirement income system from their perspective. These large organizations were interested in providing retirement security to their employees, and frustrated at what often seems to be a stream of endless roadblocks.

What I heard from the two sets of people presented a very sharp contrast. At NASI, there were no representatives of the business community and none of the presenters had lived through the challenge of operating pension plans. Further, when asked what business thought about the issues and whether the financial crisis reinforced the importance of DB plans, the response was that business was not interested in offering this type of benefit. I was very frustrated to hear this from a researcher has not been a part of the discussions in the business community. The correct answer should have been to talk to someone in the business community and get their views. While this might seem difficult to an academic or policy person not in touch with benefit managers, there are ways to access this information.

There are groups that represent plan sponsors in Washington and provide business perspective to Congress. They include the ERISA Industry Committee and American Benefits Council. There are also groups that represent public sector plan sponsors. Another way to gain insight on business perspectives is to talk with consultants who work with plan sponsors. One of the great values of NASI is that it brings together people with diverse viewpoints.

Employers have long been an important part of retirement security in America. My view is that many employers have worked for a long time to protect employee security, and that they have endured many roadblocks. The success stories are hidden from view while failures are the focus of the news. How many more roadblocks they are willing to face is not clear, but we reduce the chances if we make it more difficult for them. It is vital for other stakeholders to have a dialogue with the employer community, and not to just make assumptions about it.

Strengthening Social Security Wage Reporting For Farm Workers

Barbara Robles
Associate Professor, School of Social Work, Arizona State University

Farm workers are at risk of not having their work count toward Social Security benefits because their employers may erroneously classify them as independent contractors or simply fail to pay Social Security taxes and report wages. Strengthening Social Security for Farm Workers: The Fragile Retirement Prospects for Hispanic Farm Worker Families supports legislation introduced in the 110th Congress, along with stronger enforcement of existing laws, to strengthen wage reporting. The proposal also notes that the changes would increase tax receipts and benefit the Latino farm worker population by increasing their Social Security benefits, providing better access to the Earned Income Tax Credit, and easing the burden on adult children of farm workers who have the triple burden of school debt, raising children and supporting aging parents.

Click here to download the full policy proposal developed as part of the project, Strengthening Social Security for Vulnerable Groups.

The project was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Campaign for American Workers.

Increasing Social Security Benefits for Low-Wage Single Retirees

Patricia E. Dilley
Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law

Single retirees (that is, never married, divorced or widowed) are at high risk of being poor in old age. The decline in private pensions, rising out-of-pocket health costs, and declining housing values can be expected to make the already precarious financial situation of unmarried retirees even worse. Restoring Old Age Income Security to Low-Wage Single Workers proposes a change to the basic Social Security retired-worker benefit formula that would increase benefits for single retirees with at least 30 years of covered employment and low lifetime earnings. A second change would target single beneficiaries over age 85. Those who had at least 30 years of covered work, and received relatively low benefits (less than 75 percent of the average benefit), would receive a 10 percent benefit increase at age 85.

Click here to download the full policy proposal developed as part of the project, Strengthening Social Security for Vulnerable Groups.

The project was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Campaign for American Workers.

A New Social Security Minimum Benefit For Low Lifetime Earners

Melissa Favreault
Senior Research Associate, The Urban Institute

Despite a lifetime of hard work, many workers end up poor or near poor in retirement. A New Minimum Benefit for Low Lifetime Earners examines a new minimum benefit that targets workers with long careers and low lifetime earnings, along with a modest credit that compensates for up to three years of low (or no) earnings due to care giving, unemployment, or poor health. The benefit at the full retirement age would pay 60 percent of the poverty threshold for a worker with 20 years of Social Security covered work and increase to 110 percent of the poverty threshold for a worker with 40 years of work. Caregiver credits would be available only in years when a child is under age 4 and only to one parent. The credit would be 60 percent of the average wage in the first such year, 50 percent in the second year and 40 percent in the third year.

Click here to download the full policy proposal developed as part of the project, Strengthening Social Security for Vulnerable Groups.

The project was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Campaign for American Workers.

Easing the Impact of Increasing the Retirement Age: Occupational Disability

Eric Klieber
Director, Retirement Actuary, Buck Consultants

Legislation in 1983 increased from 65 to 67 the age at which Social Security pays full retirement benefits. The change lowers retirement benefits at each age they are claimed. Disabled-worker benefits remain unreduced, but are not available to individuals who fail to meet a strict test – “inability to engage in any gainful activity” – yet are unable to continue in their jobs. Strengthening Social Security for Workers in Physically Demanding Occupations proposes a benefit for such individuals based on an occupational disability test – “inability to perform the essential duties of one’s current occupation.” Making such an occupational disability benefit available at age 62 could protect recipients from retired-worker benefit reductions (or part of such reductions) due to increasing the full benefit age.

Click here to download the full policy proposal developed as part of the project, Strengthening Social Security for Vulnerable Groups.

The project was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Campaign for American Workers.

Increasing Social Security Benefits for Family Elder Caregivers

Shelley White-Means
Professor of Health Economics, University of Tennessee Health Science Center

Rose Rubin
Professor, Department of Economics, University of Memphis

Informal care provided by family members improves quality of life for frail elders, allows them to remain in the community instead of in nursing homes, and saves Medicaid dollars. Providing the care also imposes opportunity costs on caregivers that weaken their own retirement security. Retirement Security for Family Elder Care Givers with Labor Force Employment proposes to provide up to four years of Social Security credit to individuals who provide care to elders. The elders must be certified to need levels of care that would qualify for Medicaid coverage. The value of the credit would be the caregiver’s average wage in the three years before care giving interrupted earnings. The authors suggest the credit could be financed based on the reduction in public spending for nursing home care.

Click here to download the full policy proposal developed as part of the project, Strengthening Social Security for Vulnerable Groups.

The project was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Campaign for American Workers.

A Social Security Supplement for Low-Income Working Parents

Pamela Herd
Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and Sociology, La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin

Social Security provides benefits for spouses and widowed spouses, but does not provide credit for raising children. A growing portion of retiring women will not qualify for spousal benefits because they are divorced (with less than 10 years of marriage) or never married, yet will have earnings records that are limited because of time spent caring for their children. Crediting Care in Social Security: A Proposal for an Income-Tested Care Supplement proposes to supplement Social Security benefits for retirees who have raised one or more children. The supplement would be an additional 75 percent of the worker’s benefit (80 percent if two or more children were raised) but would be capped to not push the retiree’s household income above 125 percent of the poverty threshold. The benefit and income testing would be administered through individual tax returns, similar to the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Click here to download the full policy proposal developed as part of the project, Strengthening Social Security for Vulnerable Groups.

The project was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Campaign for American Workers.

Reducing Eligibility Requirements for Retirement Benefits

Andrew Biggs
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

To qualify for Social Security retired-worker benefits, individuals must have worked at least 40 calendar quarters (ten years) in jobs covered by Social Security. The Effects of Reducing Eligibility Requirements for Social Security Retirement Benefits examines the impact of eliminating the 40-quarters eligibility requirement. A small group of individuals (about 6 percent of those born in 1950) would gain eligibility for Social Security retired-worker benefits. The increases in benefits would often substitute for means-tested SSI benefits. Much of the new benefits would flow to immigrants who are not otherwise eligible for Social Security.

Click here to download the full policy proposal developed as part of the project, Strengthening Social Security for Vulnerable Groups.

The project was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Campaign for American Workers.

Challenges and Opportunities for Retirement Security

Anna M. Rappaport, F.S.A., M.A.A.A.
President, Anna Rappaport Consulting

We are truly at a crossroads with respect to retirement security in America. We have an opportunity to improve and build on what we have in the longer run, but only if we effectively address some short-term challenges. We need to do several things or we will lose our opportunities:

Find a forum where diverse stakeholders will work together effectively – those who represent the public, labor and business must work together to strengthen the system. Repeated failure to work together has led to regulatory instability and chaos that for decades has been a major contributor to the decline of pensions and loss of retirement security.

Address a critical short-term issue – the existing legislative structure (the Pension Protection Act) is designed to strengthen the funding of pension plans. Its requirements are much more stringent than prior laws, and produce very strange (and I believe unintended) impacts in the face of the financial crisis. The business community and hundreds of plan sponsors have petitioned Congress to protect the workers covered by pension plans by relaxing the requirements for faster contributions. This request would not relieve businesses from paying the required contributions, but it would give them more time. We need to remember that this is a voluntary system. If there is no temporary relief, the PPA requirements will lead to the freezing of many more defined benefit plans and to benefit curtailments. For more information on the critical PPA issues, look at http://www.eric.org/.

Maintain and strengthen Social Security – The system should be maintained as an income based system with the fine tuning needed to make it work effectively.

Understand the realities – We need to recognize the realities facing diverse stakeholders:

• Risk pooling and sharing are a very important part of a financial security system.


• Individuals are far more willing to save in an employer plan, and they are more likely to trust information provided through an employer than in the marketplace.


• Regardless of what changes are made for future benefits, people who are age 50 and over today will get their benefits primarily from existing systems, and they will not have adequate time to earn much benefit from a new system. For a very large number of people, these benefits include defined benefit plans.
  
• Choice and individual freedom are highly valued. However, a system that requires individuals to act and make decisions to ensure their long-term security will fail for many people because of lack of knowledge or discipline.


• For Americans who want to work longer or who do not have adequate assets, work options that enable work to higher ages are critical.


• We need to remember successes and as well as failures as we build on current systems.


• We are living longer. Periods of retirement have increased each decade, and we have failed as a society to adjust out benefits to demographic realities.


• Americans are retiring gradually. Many have a period between full-time career commitment and total exit from the labor force where they are working at a slower pace, and often partially retiring.


• The size of the program and risk pool matters. A large program can access the market on an efficient basis with much lower expense charges and better results than an individual or small employer.

What should the future system look like? As we focus on retirement security for the next generation and look for new options, we should be prepared for a Tier II system that is different from the existing system. But at the same time it is vital not to throw out the baby with the bath water. Many ideas and options are surfacing. It is critical that we find solutions that offer adequate pooling of risk, respond to the realities of how individuals behave, and build on the strength of our employment and market based system. Rather than focusing on a specific solution immediately, we need to think about trade-offs and options as we balance stakeholder issues.

My wish is that first we deal with the immediate critical issues to not further damage the system that will be the bedrock for the next 10-15 years of retirees and that we work together to create a sound future for Americans. Today, I see our priorities as:

• Creating the right platform to work together.


• Dealing with the short-term crisis so that the long-term situation is not far worse.

Pensions for Everyone

Jonathan B. Forman
Alfred P. Murrah Professor of Law
University of Oklahoma College of Law
Originally Published on 1/11/08

Only half of American workers have a pension plan, and only a fraction of those have traditional pensions that replace a meaningful part of their final pay. Instead, most workers with a pension today have a 401(k) plan or an individual retirement account, and according to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, only a fraction of those workers will save enough to get a meaningful monthly benefit.

This month the oldest baby boomers started turning 62, and millions more will follow in the coming decades. Before it is too late, we need to adopt policies to ensure that every worker has adequate retirement savings.

Prior to 1980, many workers had traditional "defined benefit" pension plans that provided monthly benefits based on a percentage of their final pay. Since then, most private-sector employers have shifted to 401(k) plans and other "defined contribution" plans. In these plans, workers accumulate money in individual accounts and withdraw it during retirement.

Unfortunately, many of these workers will end up "arriving at retirement with insufficient savings to support themselves." The title of the GAO report says it all: "Private Pensions: Low Defined Contribution Plan Savings May Pose Challenges to Retirement Security, Especially for Many Low-Income Workers."

The GAO found that the typical worker had just $22,800 set aside in a defined contribution plan in 2004. Worse still, only 8 percent of workers in the poorest 25 percent of households had a defined contribution plan.

Even workers age 55 to 64 in 2004 had a median account balance of just $50,000. At age 65, that would buy a lifetime annuity of that would pay just $367 per month ($4,400 a year).

The GAO also estimates that the current defined contribution system could replace about 22 percent of final pay for a typical worker, but replacement rates would vary widely across income groups. The richest 25 percent of workers would get almost 34 percent of final pay, but the poorest 25 percent would get just 10.3 percent of final pay.

Moreover, 37 percent of workers would have absolutely no savings from defined contribution plans when they retire, and 63 percent of those in the poorest 25 percent of households would have no defined contribution savings.

To be sure, Social Security would still provide a basic benefit for older Americans. The typical retired worker now gets around $1,050 a month. But many retirees get far less, and Social Security will provide lower replacement rates in the long run, even if we somehow come up with the $4.7 trillion in new revenues needed to cover the current shortfall.

On the bright side, since 2004 we have made it easier for employers to automatically enroll employees in 401(k) plans, and we have made the retirement savings tax credit permanent. But these small steps will not avert a retirement income crisis for the baby boomers and beyond.

At the very least, we need to make sure that every worker has an easy way to save for retirement. We might, for example, let state government entities create "State-K" pension plans for employers that do not already have pension plans. Or we could require that those employers offer payroll-deduction IRAs to their workers.

Even with universal access, however, many workers simply will not save for retirement. In the end, we will need a mandatory universal pension system.

For example, we might collect another 3 percent of payroll from every American worker and place that money into individual retirement savings accounts. Those accounts could be held by the government, invested in a broadly diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds, and converted into a monthly annuity at retirement. In a new discussion paper for the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, Adam Carasso of the New America Foundation and I estimate that these 3-percent-of payroll accounts would provide 13.8 percent of final wages at retirement for every worker.

Our paper, "Tax Considerations in a Universal Pension System," also shows how targeted tax subsidies could lead to even larger benefits for low- and moderate-income workers.

Millions of American workers have been left out of the current pension system and have no retirement savings. A system of 3-percent-of- payroll individual accounts would ensure that every worker has at least some retirement savings. Altogether, Social Security and these "add-on" individual accounts would guarantee that every worker has an adequate retirement income.