Few events have posed as many challenges for retirement and retirement policy as the crisis of the late 2000s. At the end of the last decade, the United States experienced the Great Recession-a combination of unprecedented wealth losses and historically high unemployment increases that marked the longest economic recession since the Great Depression. These adverse economic shocks coincided with the burgeoning entry into retirement by the baby boomer generation, those born in the United States between 1946 and 1964. The confluence of these trends meant that retirees may have faced greater economic insecurity than at any point since World War II. This book brings together a number of influential researchers whose work is focused on economic policies and their impacts on retirement income security. They come from both academic and policy backgrounds. Specifically, half of the eight contributors are academics, while the other four come from think tanks in Washington, DC. This book is thus intended to combine research and policy. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Aging and Social Policy.

The manner in which financial market developments permeate labor and industrial relations may explain many of the pressing phenomena of our times-economic instability, jobless recoveries, and high income and wealth inequality. Financial market trends influence hiring and compensation decisions, change managerial outlooks, steer investments and technology, and strain collective bargaining agreements. Inequality, Uncertainty, and Opportunity provides readers with a sense of the many ways in which financial market developments influence labor and industrial relations. A proliferation of financial goods and services and an increasing focus on short-term financial performance measures largely dominated developed economies' development for more than three decades. These trends directly affect the fundamental macroeconomic relationships, such as economic growth and job creation, for firm behavior, particularly with respect to hiring and productive investments, and for individual decision making, as in the realm of retirement savings. Economies have become less stable, job creation has become more tenuous, and income inequality has soared. Contributors: Eileen Appelbaum, Center for Economic and Policy Research; Rose Batt, Cornell University; Sara M Bernardo, University of Massachusetts Boston; Joseph Blasi, Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations; Janet Boguslaw, Brandeis University; Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, University of Illinois; Klaus Doerre, University of Jena, Germany; Teresa Ghilarducci, New School University; Adam Hersh, Center for American Progress; William Lazonick, University of Massachusetts Lowell; David Madland, Center for American Progress; Joelle Saad-Lessler, New School University; Christian E. Weller, University of Massachusetts Boston; Dan Weltmann, Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations; Jeffrey Wenger, University of Georgia; Edward N. Wolff, New York University

In the US, retirement savings are low while risk exposure is high, thus dooming many retirees to a low standard of living. This book offers straightforward solutions to build real retirement security for American families.

This volume outlines a fresh view on pension plans from the perspective of both the employer and employee, describing the possibilities in American labor relations and in Congress to meet employers' needs to compete and to fulfill the enduring desire of workers to plan for a financially secure period of leisure at the end of their working lives. The authors examine the advantages to employers from sponsoring a defined benefit plan and focus on ways to stabilize defined benefit plan coverage. They also look into the need for changes in regulations governing defined contribution plans, offering a number of innovative policy solutions. Finally, they provide insight into the political and institutional constraints that may impede the creation of new pension legislation that could help to strengthen defined benefit plans and improve defined contribution plans.

Um zu einem umfassenden Verstandnis der Moderne zu gelangen, das auch transdisziplinare Fragestellungen berucksichtigt, setzen sich renommierte Soziologen, Philosophen, Politologen und Literaturwissenschaftler aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven mit Analogien und Differenzen der verschiedenen Begriffe der Moderne auseinander.