RELAB POLICY NOTE | A growing pool of American older workers (age 55 and over) must continue working or seeking work because their retirement income is inadequate.

RELAB POLICY NOTE | Over 5 million older Americans and adults with disabilities rely on Medicaid for long-term care services.

RELAB POLICY NOTE | Late Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials are retiring under worse conditions than Early Baby Boomers.

RELAB POLICY NOTE | This third report in the SCEPA Tracking the Retirement Crisis series shares insights from in-depth interviews conducted in April and May 2025.

RELAB POLICY NOTE | Retirement security in the United States is at a critical turning point. As the Baby Boomer generation ages, the nation now has more retirement-age individuals…

RELAB POLICY NOTE | In just eight weeks, the trust that Social Security has built over the past 90 years may have been completely undermined.

RELAB POLICY NOTE | A brief analysis of the 2022 round of the Survey of Consumer Finance indicates that the middle 70% of households by income that are aged 50-65 have a median retirement account savings of $86,000, while also having a median debt of $89,700. 

RELAB POLICY NOTE | How are older debtors and their retirement savings impacted by student loans? Our analysis of the data shows that millions of older workers in the U.S. have significant student debt that may hinder their ability to retire comfortably.

RELAB POLICY NOTE | Official U.S. poverty rates significantly undercount America’s elderly poor. According to internationally-recognized relative poverty measures, more than 12 million older Americans are poor.

RELAB POLICY NOTE | What do surveys say about how Americans feel about their ability to retire? Our analysis shows Americans hold a wide range of anxiety about their retirement futures

RELAB POLICY NOTE | Why does the United States’ pension system perform poorly compared with systems in other countries?

RELAB POLICY NOTE | America’s eldercare system relies on families to provide care to aging adults, leaving those without family or wealth particularly vulnerable to having their care needs go unmet.

RELAB POLICY NOTE |The Social Security benefit structure penalizes people who claim before age 70. Yet over one-fifth of eligible people claim before their full retirement age (age 67 for those born in 1960), and over 90 percent claim before the maximum age of 70, resulting in reduced monthly benefits.

RELAB POLICY NOTE | Challenging the widespread assumption that people claim their retirement benefits only when they retire, more than one-fifth of older workers in the United States start claiming Social Security benefits as soon as they are eligible, even while working for pay.

RELAB POLICY NOTE | In the United States, high overall rates of home ownership among households aged 55–64 obscure a vital reality. Many low-income older households risk financial fragility because they are renters and high rent burdens inhibit their ability to save for emergencies.

RELAB POLICY NOTE | Unpaid care work — the vast majority of such work in the United States — is primarily shouldered by economically vulnerable people.

RELAB POLICY NOTE | The slow return to normalcy after the Covid-19 pandemic has brought back a perennial risk to older workers’ wellbeing: financial fragility.

RELAB POLICY NOTE | Social Security is the most essential and well-functioning part of the U.S. retirement system. Any reforms to federal retirement policy—while necessary and long overdue—must be built on the foundation of a protected and strengthened Social Security system.

RELAB POLICY NOTE | Up to 40 percent of middle-income workers are at risk of downward mobility into poverty or near-poverty in retirement because of an inefficient retirement system that disproportionately benefits those with high incomes.

RELAB POLICY NOTE | Contrary to the hope that technology and machines have made work easier for most, more than 25 percent of older white workers and over 40 percent of older Black and Hispanic workers toil in physically demanding jobs.