Description: This paper examines how the cash balance plan design is related to the normal cost and accrued liability in the various actuarial cost methods, as well as the interaction of the economic assumptions in the valuation. The analysis will show that the traditional cost methods may understate the actual liability. The paper also presents an alternative cost method, along with its advantages and disadvantages. From Cash Balance Symposium Monograph, M-RS02-3.

Description: This paper suggests that two opposing pressures are at work in the United States. One is the limit to the number of retired adults that the nation can support. The other is the growing diversity of needs and desires of older people and employers. These two opposing pressures will frame the issues of the future.

Description: This paper suggests a number of legislative changes, educational efforts, and changes in annuity products and asset allocation software that could assist workers and retirees to better prepare for and respond to declining mortality rates and future increases in income needs. From Retirement Needs Framework, M-RS00-1.

Description: This paper provides some background about demography, health and retirement summarizes how current pension laws influence the design of pension plans and the timing of retirement and looks at the optimal retirement age from the perspective of employers, government and workers.

Description: This paper takes the position that the U.K. actuarial profession has still not come to a single view on financial economics, and the major divisions that remain continue to hamstring its policy development. From Current Pension Actuarial Practice in Light of Financial Economics Symposium, M-RS04-1.

Description: This paper presents the findings of a study which examines four age groups of retirees and how well they are meeting their financial needs and how much an effect real estate can have on meeting retirement expenses.

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.