Pensions in the 2000s
Subtitle: the lost decade?
By: Edward N. Wolff
Contributors: National Bureau of Economic Research
Series: NBER working paper series -- working paper 16991; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) -- working paper no. 16991.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Description: "The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this.  You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email.  One of the most dramatic changes in the retirement income system over the last three decades has been a decline in traditional defined benefit (DB) pension plans and a corresponding rise in defined contribution (DC) pensions.  Have workers benefited from this change? Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, I find that after robust gains in the 1980s and 1990s, pension wealth experienced a marked slowdown in growth from 2001 to 2007.  Projections to 2009 indicate no increase in pension wealth from 2001 to 2009.  Retirement wealth is also found to offset the inequality in standard household net worth.  However, I find that pensions had a weaker offsetting effect on wealth inequality in 2007 than in 1989.  As a result, whereas standard net worth inequality showed little change from 1989 to 2007, the inequality of private augmented wealth (the sum of pension wealth and net worth) did increase over this period.  These results hold up even when Social Security wealth and employer contributions to DC plans are included in the measure of wealth and when adjustments are made for future tax liabilities on retirement wealth"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Title from PDF file as viewed on 7/7/2011.

Includes bibliographical references.

Also available in print.

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Mode of access: World Wide Web.