Description: A review of the book 'Indexation of Pensions and Other Benefits' by Robert J. Myers, which deals with the indexing of Social Security and government employee pension plans in the U.S., Canada, and other countries, as well as private pension plans, for which the author advocates the voluntary adoption of automatic indexing.

Description: The author of this article notes that “valuing pension or long-term disability plans with Social Security offsets generally requires some assumptions about the future course of the wage base and benefit formula,” and “the usual approach is to select annual percentage increases for these two variables which relate reasonably and well to the valuation salary scale, and then to project Social Security on that basis.” The author goes on to discuss how the actuary and plan sponsor can be comfortable with a particular choice of parameters, given that “costs can be very sensitive to the Social Security projection and recent history offers little guidance.”