Retirement Demographics Industry

News

Wishful Thinking Dominates Withdrawal Rates

MetLife’s 2008 Retirement Income IQ Test found that 69% of pre-retirees overestimate the rate at which they can draw down their savings.

Couples Will Need $85,000 To Insure For Long-Term Care—Fidelity

More than half of Americans over age 65 will eventually need at least a year of long-term care, and about 20% will require more than five years of care.

Defined Benefit Plans Outperform 401(k) Plans

Over a 12-year period, defined benefit plans outperformed defined contribution plans by nearly 14%, according to Watson Wyatt Worldwide.

Public Pensions Defend Role In Letter To Congress

Pension plans have set aside roughly $3 trillion in assets to pay for future benefits, says the National Association of State Retirement Administrators.

Retirement Un-Preparedness is a Global Problem, MetLife Survey Shows

Nearly half of U.S. employees and millions of workers abroad have not taken steps to determine their income needs in retirement.

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Articles

Annuities Remain Best Bet For Retirees

Outside of a defined benefit plan, traditional life annuities issued by insurance companies are the best ways to reduce longevity risk for women. Yet few retirees purchase them, according to a recent report entitled, 'Evaluation of Approaches To Reducing Women's Longevity Risk.' The report, by Beverly Orth of Mercer Human Resource Consulting, confirms the conventional wisdom that variable annuities, though popular as tax-deferral vehicles, are almost never annuitized. She attributes that to a lack of education about annuities and the media's negative portrayal of them.

Research Watch

As an ongoing feature, Retirement Income Reporter will offer its readers a digest of new and compelling research pertinent to the annuity and decumulation industries.

A Crisis with a Gender Bias

The great open secret of the Baby Boomers' retirement crisis is that, if left unaddressed, the impact of the predicted shortfall of retirement income will weigh much more heavily on women than on men.

Why Retirees Aren't Purchasing Lifetime Annuities

A recent Working Paper, entitled Behavioral Obstacles to the Annuity Market by Wei-Yin Hu and Jason S. Scott, published by the Pension Research Council of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, uses basic principles of behavioral finance in an attempt to explain 'why most retirees do not purchase longevity insurance in the form of lifetime annuities' despite the fact that 'decades of economic analysis... have pointed to annuities as a major component…

Research Watch

By claiming Social Security benefits later, married men would improve the retirement income security of their surviving spouses, according to a report from the Center of Retirement Research at Boston College.

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