Description: This meeting session, which occurred at the April 1982 Society of Actuaries meeting in Orlando, presented a discussion of U.S. Social Security issues. Questions discussed included: 1. What is the financial status of the Social Security program? 2. What changes have been recently adopted and what changes have been proposed? 3. How would these changes affect the private pension system costs and plan design? 4. What is the proper role of the actuarial profession regarding the Social Security program? Included discussion of the paper, Constant Replacement Ratios in Retirement: A Theoretical Approach,' by Barnet N. Berin and Anthony B. Richter.

Description: This article discusses female and male mortality rates, the lower mortality rate of females and the ramifications of the increasing female population in terms of equitable treatment and their roles in the workforce.

Description: This paper offers a mathematical discussion of integrating private pension plans with social security and looks at IRS rules, earnings replacement by social security, integrating defined benefit and defined contribution plans, early retirement, target plans, discrimination test and other issues. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1976, Vol. 28.

Description: These are discussions of the following research papers: 1. 'Actuarial Functions as Expected Values' by John A. Fibiger and Stephen G. Kellison, and 2. 'A New Look at Gain and Loss Analysis' by Arthur W. Anderson. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1971, Vol. 23, Pt. 1, No. 66 AB.

Description: This 1982 discussion session addresses three questions: 1. How will continued high rates of inflation affect the financial needs of retired persons, both absolutely and in comparison with other segments of the population?, 2. What effects will there be on the age of retirement and the need for retirement income?, and 3. To what extent will these needs be met from social programs, private plans or individual savings?

Description: This is a discussion of 'The Generalized Family of Aggregate Actuarial Cost Methods for Pension Funding' by John R. Taylor. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1967, Vol. 19, Pt. 1, No. 54.

Description: This panel discussion which was presented at the SOA's 1976 Spring Meeting in Washington D.C. focused on various pension plan issues which have arisen in difficult economic times in the mid-1970's.

Description: Recognizing the increase in the rate of inflation over recent years in the United States, pension plans have been improving benefits for retired employees. In this paper, a planning model is developed for such increases, based on periodic examination of the increase in pension necessary to keep a replacement ratio constant. This ratio is initially related to the private pension plus Social Security benefit, divided by final average salary. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1982, Vol. 34.

Description: Actuaries have been thinking about how to improve North American retirement systems in big and small ways for a number of years. This web page contains Bob Berin’s thoughts on this topic from the September 1990 Pension Section News, followed by Cindy Levering’s update on the Retirement 20/20 initiative.

Description: This paper discusses decoupling of social security - meaning that the coupling of actual benefits for those already beneficiaries and potential benefits for future beneficiaries be broken. The purposes are to describe the environment, the problem which decoupling addresses and the importance of a rational solution. The paper discusses the wage-indexing approach and the price-indexing approach. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1977, Vol. 29.