The return of a traditional pension: Is IBM’s new pension strategy a cost-saving measure or a strategic shift in retirement philosophy? Professor Olivia S. Mitchell of The Wharton School shares her thoughts on the change and how IBM’s decision might change retirement saving. …Read More
Our newest volume Pension Funds and Sustainable Investment: Challenges and Opportunities is now available open access via Oxford University Press.…Read More
Pension plan investment consultants must oversee accurate data entry, and PSERS case points to inadequate internal processes and standards of care, notes Wharton Professor Olivia S. Mitchell via FundFire. (Account required)…Read More
Rewriting Chile’s constitution could mean changes to the country’s fragile pension system. This may involve raising the retirement age, perhaps to 75 or 80, for those who have not been able to save for their old age, says Wharton Prof. Olivia S. Mitchell, via The Dialogue.…Read More
The last CalPERS CIO resigned 8 months ago and has yet to be replaced. The longer the post stays open, the harder it will be to ensure CalPERS can fulfill all its obligations, notes Wharton Prof. Olivia S. Mitchell to the Fresno Bee.…Read More
There is an emerging financial crisis among multiemployer pension plans in America. These plans are a subset of private sector defined benefit pensions covering 10 million workers and retirees. Most critical are the projected bankruptcies of the Teamsters Central States and the United Mineworkers of America plans, making front page news for the last several months. These plans and many others were undermined by two financial market crashes between 2000 and 2009, corporate bankruptcies, de-regulation, and over-regulation. It will now take more than hope to fix them.…Read More
Defined contribution plans – often known as 401k plans – have become the mainstay of US company pensions, yet their main function has been to get employees to save and invest during their work years. These plans haven’t been successful at delivering lifetime income benefits, as a rule: fewer than one-fifth of all such plans today help workers convert their plan assets into retirement paychecks.…Read More
Many U.S. state and local employee pensions are facing dire problems as massive plan liabilities come due, threatening to drain government coffers. As Robert Novy-Marx and Joshua Rauh wrote in the Journal of Finance, 21 state pensions held less than 40 percent of the assets needed to pay benefits. Their estimate of the aggregate “funding gap” faced by states was roughly $2.5 trillion in 2009. Since then, the story has not improved, and it has likely worsened. Puerto Rico recently joined Detroit as a case study of fiscal and public pension mismanagement and failure, and the Puerto Rican pension is essentially without any assets.…Read More
Chile provides a safety net for those who fall into poverty in old age, but it’s still an imperfect pension system that needs work.
Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) retirement programs in the U.S. and many European countries are struggling to remain solvent in the face of an aging population, fewer workers, and a shortfall in private savings. A different approach would strengthen individual savings accounts by requiring workers to contribute out of pre-tax income, combined with a redistributive means-tested safety net for those who fall into poverty in old age.…Read More
Since its launch 35 years ago, Chile’s retirement system has been hailed as “best in class” by pension experts near and far. The country’s fabled individual and privately-managed accounts include around 10 million affiliates, hold $160 billion in investments, and pay retirement benefits to over a million retirees. So why did President Michelle Bachelet establish a Pension Reform Commission that just delivered to her 58 specific reforms and three comprehensive proposals to overhaul remodel Chile’s retirement system?…Read More
