Restructuring Retirement Risks

This book highlights the importance of retirement security as a major policy concern of our time. A generation of "Baby Boomers" is on the verge of retirement, yet pension systems confront crushing challenges, and policymakers seek direction. The authors set their sights on employees' needs and expectations, employers' intentions and realizations, and policymakers' efforts to resolve the many challenges. Despite the fact that retirement systems face deep stresses exacerbated by volatile capital markets, poor corporate earning streams, weak macroeconomic performance, and international turmoil, nevertheless, contributors in this volume show courage and creativity in plotting the course over uneven terrain.

In the book, three aspects of the evolution of risk and reward-sharing in retirement are evaluated, to offer guidance to pension fiduciaries, plan participants, and policymakers. First, the volume formulates new perspectives for assessing retirement risks and rewards. Second, it evaluates efforts to insure retirement plans. Third, it proposes several new strategies for managing retirement system risk.

The volume will be especially useful for managers working toward more efficient pension plans; to scholars and policymakers seeking to maximize pension design effectiveness; and to actuaries and tax specialists concerned with pension regulation.

David Blitzstein is the Director of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) Negotiated Benefits Department where he advises local unions in collective bargaining on pension and health insurance issues and consults with the Union's 150 jointly trusted health and welfare and pension plans nationwide. Mr. Blitzstein also serves as trustee of the UFCW Industry Pension Fund, and the UFCW National Health and Welfare Fund. Mr. Blitzstein represents the UFCW as a member of the working committee of the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans. In addition he serves on the Pension Research Council Advisory Board at the Wharton School; he is a member of the Employee Benefits Research Institute and the National Academy of Social Insurance. He received the BS degree from the University of Pennsylvania and he received the MS in Labor Studies from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
Olivia S. Mitchell is the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor of Insurance and Risk Management, the Executive Director of the Pension Research Council, and the Director of the Boettner Center on Pensions and Retirement Research at the Wharton School. Concurrently Dr. Mitchell is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Co Investigator for the AHEAD/ Health and Retirement Studies at the University of Michigan. Dr. Mitchell's main areas of research and teaching are private and public insurance, risk management, public finance and labor markets, and compensation and pensions, with a US and an international focus. She received the BA in Economics from Harvard University and the MA and PhD degrees in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Stephen P. Utkus is the Director of the Vanguard Center for Retirement Research, where he conducts and sponsors research on retirement savings and retirement benefits. His current research examines attitudes and expectations regarding retirement, financial markets and employer-sponsored retirement plans; the psychological and behavioral aspects of participant decision-making; trading and investment behavior among retirement plan participants; fiduciary issues arising from retirement programs; and global trends in public and private pension plans. Mr. Utkus serves on the Pension Research Council Advisory Board and he is also a Visiting Scholar at the Wharton School. He received the BS in Computer Science from MIT and the M.B.A. in Finance from The Wharton School.