In this new conference volume from the National Academy of Social Insurance, experts offer differing views on what changes will, and must, occur to ensure the continuing viability of Social Security, retirement benefits, unemployment insurance, Medicare, and health security programs. The book opens with a general overview of how economic and political forces will shape the future of social insurance. In the chapters that follow, contributors discuss and debate a full range of related topics, including future Social Security investment returns, the changing face of private retirement plans, insuring longevity risk in pensions and Social Security, issues in unemployment insurance, long-term financing, governance, and markets for Medicare, and health care for the underserved and uninsured. Contributors include William C. Dudley (Goldman Sachs), Richard Berner (Morgan Stanley Dean Witter), Kilolo Kijakazi (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities), Fay Lomax Cook (Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University), Lawrence Jacobs (University of Minnesota), Jack VanDerhei (Fox School of Business Management, Temple University) Craig Copeland (Employee Benefit Research Institute), Jeffery R. Brown (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard), Janet Norwood (1993-96 Advisory Council on Unemployment Compensation), Marilyn Moon (Urban Institute), Sheila Burke (Smithsonian Institution and Kennedy School of Government, Harvard), Mark Schlesinger (Yale), Gerard Anderson (Johns Hopkins University), Lauren LeRoy (Grantmakers in Health), Ruth Riedel (Alliance Healthcare Foundation of San Diego), and Henrie M. Treadwell (W. K. Kellog Foundations Community Voices).

In one of the richest countries on Earth it has effectively become a crime to be poor. For example, in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.S. Department of Justice didn't just expose racially biased policing; it also exposed exorbitant fines and fees for minor crimes that mainly hit the city's poor, African American population, resulting in jail by the thousands. As Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to Be Poor, in fact Ferguson is everywhere: the debtors' prisons of the twenty-first century.

Though the world's population continues to grow, total fertility rates are dropping below replacement level in many parts of the world. The Baby Bust, a landmark book of essays by demographic, economic, and political science experts, examines the global 'birth dearth' and its causes, implications, and policy options. Focusing in large part on the United States, this book also includes data from Europe and Japan and makes important comparisons between the three regions. It concludes with suggestions for making America's future sound and prosperous, through the regularization and legalization of appropriate levels of immigration; enhancing governmental efforts to increase productivity; and finally, ending the present waste of so many underutilized members of the workforce, particularly minorities and the poor.

If America's gross national income of over GBP14 trillion were divided evenly between the entire US population, every household could call itself middle class. Yet the income level disparity in the US is now wider than at any point since the Great Depression. So Rich, So Poor delves into what is happening to the people behind the statistics and takes a particular look at the continuing crisis of young African Americans. Crucial reading for anyone who wishes to understand the most critical American dilemma of the 21st century.