Description: This paper examines the effects that the recent housing bubble had on the household financial behavior of different birth cohorts and the consequences of those behavioral choices for boomers’ projected retirement security.

Description: Discussant comments for the 2009 Housing Wealth monograph paper, Housing Wealth Effects, Boomer Refinancing, Housing Debt, and Retirement Saving Adequacy-1989-2007. This paper examines the effects that the recent housing bubble had on the household financial behavior of different birth cohorts and the consequences of those behavioral choices for boomers’ projected retirement security. The authors' presentation is very much fact based... and leave it to others who may want to speculate on the implications of the findings.

Description: This paper explores the context for retirement in the future, sets forth alternative scenarios for retirement and considers the public policy, individual, and family implications of these scenarios.

Description: This paper proposes a mandatory universal pension system MUPS which would be a system of fully portable IRA accounts piggy-backed on to existing Social Security withholding.

Description: The adoption of FAS 158 forces sponsors of post-employment health benefit plans to consider how to manage the volatility that changes in medical care inflation create in the other postemployment benefits (OPEB) liability. By choosing carefully how the nominal discount rate used for the liability is decomposed into real rates and inflation, I illustrate that the true exposure to an OPEB plan is to the spread of medical care inflation above (or below) the overall inflation rate. The implication is that an effective immunization strategy exists that can eliminate most of the volatility in the OPEB account.

Description: The current financial model put forth as the market value of public sector pension benefit liabilities is simply the expected cash flows of the accumulated benefit obligation, as defined for current private sector financial reporting, discounted using a risk-free yield curve. This model is in serious need of an overhaul. This monograph addresses this issue.

Description: Paper presents a conceptual approach that could improve the security of retiree benefits while reducing the variability of employer contributions and improving the long-term prospects of the plan as a whole.

Description: A common approach to estimating the total amount of savings required to fund retirement is to first apply a generic “replacement rate” to pre-retirement income, such as 80%, to get the desired retirement income need. That need is then assumed to increase annually at the rate of inflation for the duration of retirement, which is generally assumed to be some fixed period, such as 30 years. Using government data along with a fairly simple market and mortality model, we explore these assumptions to more accurately estimate the true cost of retirement

Description: The methods of pension funding are generally understood, but references in the actuarial literature are rather sparse. This paper attempt, in some measure, to get at least the fundamentals of pension funding into the actuarial literature. From Society of Actuaries 50th Anniversary Monograph, M-AV99-1.

Description: This paper explores the range of contribution policies allowable under various sets of rules, and then proposes that plan sponsors be allowed to contribute the normal cost as a deductible contribution each year. From The Future of Pension Plan Funding and Disclosure Monograph, M-RS05-1.