Research
Older Workers Claim Social Security While Working, Upending Beliefs About Raising the Retirement Age
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. Low-income older workers are more than three times as likely as high-income workers to claim early, indicating a reliance on Social Security payments to supplement low wages. Those who claim before the full retirement age...
Policy Note | Unpaid care work — the vast majority of such work in the United States — is primarily shouldered by economically vulnerable people. The costs associated with unpaid care work compound existing economic insecurity, leading to higher rates of poverty in old age. It is essential to support informal caregivers by recognizing caregiving as work and expanding their access to social safety net programs and providing paid family care leave.
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. Universal retirement accounts and providing workers with more equitable and better targeted tax incentives are among the best methods to supplement Social Security and prevent downward mobility in retirement.
Conventional economic analysis depicts the jobs market as finite, assuming immigration lowers wages and job prospects for American workers.
Inadequate retirement accounts will cause 8.5 million middle-class older workers and their spouses to be downwardly mobile, falling into poverty or near poverty in their old age.
While heralding the bipartisan effort and innovation of active states, ReLab's new report, "State Retirement Reform: Lifting Up Best Practices," seeks to broaden options for future legislation by raising up best practices from the movement's early leaders.
Financialized retirement systems, like defined contribution (DC) plans in the U.S., shift market risk away from employers and governments to individuals.
How does effective demand, productivity growth, income, and wealth distributions influence and constrain the economy?
This paper explores how climate damage affects the long-run evolution of the economy.
