The worldwide financial crisis has wrought deep changes in capital and labor markets, old-age retirement systems, and household retirement and consumption patterns. Confidence has been shaken in both the traditional defined benefit and defined contribution plans. Around the world, plan sponsors, fiduciaries, policymakers, and households have gained a new awareness of retirement risk. When pressed to reform post-crisis, many would recommend enhancing financial advice for plan participants, emphasizing flexibility and the positive effect of working another one or two years to make up for investment losses in the downturn. Adding to this is the continuing need for financial education, essential as the retirement system moves increasingly toward personal account pensions. Perhaps most important of all is the need for greater understanding of risk throughout the retirement security system, along with new approaches to re-engineering retirement pensions. This volume explores the lessons to be learnt for retirement planning and long-term financial security in view of the massive shocks to stock markets, labour markets, and pension plans resulting from the financial crisis. It aims to rethink retirement in the new economic era, including the resilience of defined contribution plans and how defined benefit plans reacted to the financial crisis.

For more than five decades, Fundamentals of Private Pensions has been the most authoritative text and reference book on retirement plans in the United States. The ninth edition is completely updated and reflects recent developments in retirement plans including the passage of the US Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA), the widespread shift toward hybrid and defined contribution plans, and a burgeoning economics and finance research literature on retirement and retirement plans. The volume is organized into eight main sections so the reader may use the volume as a text, a research tool, or a general reference.
Section I (Chapter 1) introduces the historical evolution of the pension movement and the underlying forces that shaped its progress. Section II (Chapters 2 and 3) explains how employer-provided pensions fit into the patchwork of the U.S. retirement income security system, especially Social Security. The section also includes a discussion of the economics of tax incentives and their effect on retirement plan offerings and the structure of the benefits provided. Section III (Chapters 4 through 9) lays out the economic role of retirement plans--their design, workforce incentives, plan finances, production of adequate retirement income, possibilities for phased retirement, and the risk of outliving pension assets. Section IV (Chapters 10 through 13) examines the various forms of defined benefit and defined contribution plans, including hybrid plans, in terms of their structure, requirements, and operations. Section V (Chapters 14 through 20) lays out the regulatory environment in which plans operate; this extensive material has been especially updated to reflect PPA, and the reams of associated guidance and implementing regulations. Section VI (Chapters 21 through 25) explores the funding and accounting rules under which private defined benefit plans operate; this section also reflects the new PPA rules. The penultimate section (Chapters 26 through 28) includes a complete revamping of chapters on risk management and investments applicable to retirement plans. The section describes modern portfolio theory and its broad implications for retirement investing, and in two separate chapters, specific implications for defined benefit and defined contribution plans. The final section (Chapter 29) concludes the text with a discussion of the future of retirement plans in the United States and around the world--a particularly timely subject in light of the extreme financial volatility experienced in 2008 and the pending retirement of the baby boom generation.

"The private pension system, together with Social Security, has provided millions of Americans with income security in retirement. But over the past thirty years, pension coverage has stagnated, leaving behind some vulnerable groups. Defined contribution plans have exposed workers to greater investment risk, while cash balance and other hybrid plans may have adverse effects on older workers caught in the transition. Pension regulations, infamous for their complexity, can be bewildering to policy analysts and policymakers. Private Pensions and Public Policies sheds timely and much-needed light on specific issues within the broader context and framework of pension reform. Contributors focus on topics that must be addressed in any reform effort, including the effects of the shift in emphasis toward defined contribution plans (after the 1974 Employee Retirement Income and Security Act) and hybrid plans (from the 1990s); regulatory issues such as nondiscrimination rules and contribution limits; how to increase the information available to participants and improve financial education; how participants in defined contribution plans make choices on questions such as asset allocation, back-loaded versus front-loaded saving, and annuities versus lump sum distributions; and the interaction of the private pension system with Social Security. Contributors include Robert L. Clark (North Carolina State University), Sylvester J. Schieber (Watson Wyatt Worldwide), Richard A. Ippolito (George Mason University School of Law), Alan L. Gustman (Dartmouth College), Thomas L. Steinmeier (Texas Tech University), John Karl Scholz (University of Wisconsin), Dean M. Maki, (JPMorgan Chase), William Even (Miami University of Ohio), Jagadeesh Gokhale (American Enterprise Institute), Laurence J. Kotlikoff (Boston University), Mark J. Warshawsky (TIAA-CREF Institute), Annika Sunden (Boston College), Andrew A. Samwick (Dartmouth College), David A. Wise (Harvard University), Joel Dickson (The Vanguard Group), Peter Merrill (PriceWaterhouseCoopers), Kent Smetters (Wharton School), Yuewu Xu (TIAA-CREF Institute), Janemarie Mulvey (Watson Wyatt Worldwide), Peter Orszag (Sebago Associates, Inc.), James M. Poterba (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), John B. Shoven (Stanford University), Clemens Sialm (University of Michigan), Leslie E. Papke (Michigan State University), Jeffrey R. Brown (Harvard University), and Michael Hurd (RAND Corporation). "

Annuity insurance products help protect retirees against outliving their incomes. Dramatic advances in life expectancy mean that today's retirees must plan on living into their eighties, their nineties, and even beyond. Longer life expectancies are the symbol of a prosperous society, but this progress also means that some retirees will need to plan conservatively and cut back substantially on their living standards or risk living so long that they exhaust their resources. This book examines the role that life annuities can play in helping people protect themselves against such outcomes. A life annuity is an insurance product that pays out a periodic amount for as long as the annuitant is alive, in exchange for a premium. The book begins with a history of life annuity markets during the twentieth century in the United States and elsewhere. It then explores recent trends in annuity pricing and money's worth, as well as the economic value generated for purchasers of these products. The book explains the potential importance of inflation-protected annuities and stock-market-linked variable annuities in providing more complete retirement security. The concluding chapters examine life annuities in various institutional settings and the tax treatment of annuity products.

The Evolving Pension System examines the foundations and the future of the private pension system. It provides a broad overview of the underlying assumptions, characteristics, and effects of existing pension policy, as well as alternative views on how public policy toward pensions should evolve in the future. Contributors include Robert Clark (North Carolina State University), Eric Engen (Federal Reserve Board), William G. Gale (Brookings Institution), Theodore Groom (Groom Law Group, Chartered), Daniel Halperin (Harvard), Alicia Munnell (Boston College), Leslie Papke (Michigan State University), Joseph Quinn (Boston College), Sylvester Schieber (Watson Wyatt), John B. Shoven (Stanford), and Jack Vanderhei (Temple University and EBRI). William G. Gale is the Joseph A. Pechman Fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. John B. Shoven is Charles R. Schwab Professor at Stanford University. Mark J. Warshawsky is director of research at the TIAA-CREF Institute.