Description: Anna Rappaport provides her usual highly-stimulating and thought-provoking summaries of ideas that she has heard and generated during some of her most recent expeditions to various Conferences, Meetings, Roundtables, Symposia and Retreats that deal with a wide variety of retirement and old age security related issues.

Description: Retirement income security under defined contribution plans depends upon sufficient savings and decumulating that savings so it provides an adequate income throughout retirement. Investment risk and longevity risk inherently complicate the latter task. The economic rationale for annuitization is clear in this context. However, annuitization rates have historically been very low, a phenomenon that is still not well understood. If retirees are making “rational” decisions based on full information, if their choices are consistent with the pursuit of their financial priorities, then low annuitization rates are not an issue for concern. In this case, retirees who annuitize and retirees who do not must have different financial priorities. However, research by the TIAA Institute shows that the decision to not annuitize is inconsistent with the stated financial priorities of most non-annuitants. It appears that non-annuitants do not und erstand that annuitization would address their financial priorities for retirement.

Description: Andy provides a succinct summary of activities that he, the council and many other engaged parties have undertaken this past year with regard to the now firmly established Retirement 20/20 initiative, including links to working drafts of papers submitted and presentations made at June’s Retirement 20/20: New Designs for a New Century conference held in Washington, D.C.

Description: This is the December 2010 issue # 73 of the Pension Section News.

Description: A letter to the editor regarding how the Social Security trustees project Social Security costs: Is it actuarial science or politics? From Pension Section News, January 2006, No. 60.

Description: May 2011 Issue 74 of Pension Section News.

Description: SMI Trust Fund: Estimates under Alternative II Assumption for Aged and Disabled Excluding End-Stage Renal Disease Enrollees from Pension Section News, October 1999, Issue No. 41.

Description: Full version of Pension Section News, February 1999, Issue No. 39.

Description: The Employee Retiree Income Security Act, or ERISA, establishes an important statutory role for pension actuaries in the United States. As part of its statutory goal to protect the retirement security of America’s workers, ERISA requires tax-qualified defined benefit plans to obtain an actuarial valuation of plan reserves each year. When valuing the plan’s reserves, the actuary is required by ERISA to act on behalf of plan participants. Thus, the plan actuary fulfills an important role in maintaining the plan’s ability to meet its on-going obligations to the plan participants and their beneficiaries. From Pension Section News, April 2006, Issue No. 61.