Reinventing the Retirement Paradigm

This book explores how rising pension and healthcare costs along with workforce aging are affecting pension and retirement planning around the world. Many middle-aged workers now realize that they will have to work longer than intended as they begin to recognize that their retirementresources will be inadequate to finance retirement consumption. Volatile capital markets, rising medical-care costs and low saving rates make retirement behavior and policy a moving target. Olivia Mitchell, Executive Director of the Pension Research Council at Wharton and Robert L. Clark, Professor of Business Management and Economics at North Carolina State University, explore these themes with colleagues, touching on a diverse set of issues ranging from employment trends to pension accounting and investment to retirement system overhaul. They illustrate how employers are activelyreformulating the meaning of work and retirement, seeking to encourage more people to work longer than ever before in the face of projected labor shortages. At the same time, public and private trust in traditional pension offerings is rapidly eroding, as companies alter, amend and terminate theirconventional plans in the face of poor investment performance and new methods of pension accounting. Experts from the UK, the US, Japan, Sweden and Canada offer international perspectives on the evolving institutions of retirement practice. This book provides readers a range of insights andstrategies not available in other volumes, and it represents an invaluable addition to the PRC/OUP series. It will be particularly valuable for managers working toward more efficient pension plans; to scholars and policymakers seekingto maximize pension design and effectiveness and to actuariesand tax specialists concerned with pension regulation. The Pension Research Council at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania was founded 50 years ago to encourage research and teaching on pensi