Description: This brief article notes that in a recent decision the U.S. Supreme Court touched on a fundamental issue of employee benefits philosophy, in holding that defined benefit pension plans must grant benefit accrual credit for periods of military service. The author argues that this seems contrary to current attitudes.

Description: Replacement ratios first gained wide prominence in the United States when the Interim Report of the President's Commission on Pension Policy was published in 1980. The replacement ratios from that report were widely used as a guideline in the design of retirement programs.

Description: This article summarizes a roundtable discussion moderated by Anna Rappaport. The purpose of the roundtable was to discuss a model of personal investing known as the Life–Cycle Model of Investing and Saving. This model is concerned with how individuals can find ways to smooth their consumption so that they have a roughly similar standard of living across different periods of time.

Description: The Financial Accounting Standards Board has developed a data bank containing information about pensions and changing prices, extracted from 1,100 companies’ annual reports.

Description: This article is about the Society of Actuaries' Education and Examination Research Paper Committee awarding 30 Fellowship credits to Krzysztof M. Ostaszewski, Ph.D., ASA, for his paper, 'Macroeconomic Aspects of Private Retirement Programs.' This is the twelfth such paper approved for Fellowship credit under the SOA’s Future Education Methods program. The paper analyzes possible macroeconomic factors contributing to the decline in the use of defined benefit plans and proposes an alternative hypothesis for the cause of the decline.

Description: This article is a review of the National Summit on Retirement Savings held on June 4-5, 1998 in Washington, D.C. The summit focused on the implications of low savings rates on the aging of America and was designed to help policy makers and all Americans think about ways to increase retirement savings.

Description: This table is an analysis of engagement among adults age 55 and older. Engagement is defined as time spent in paid work, formal volunteering informal volunteering and caregiving activities.

Description: Article from The Actuary, February 1972 – volume 6 - Issue 2 talks about pension financing concepts in various European countries.

Description: The Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 87. Employers’ Accounting for Pensions, became effective in 1987. This is an accounting/actuarial standard with significant income statement and balance sheet implications. This article discuses the results of a survey of selected affected companies regarding the impact of this standard.

Description: This article is a summary of a paper called Valuation of Final-Salary Pension Schemes by R. B. Colbran, F.I.A. submitted to the Institute of Actuaries in London last April. It includes a review of major ways in which United Kingdom and North American actuaries differ in their approaches of valuing these plans.