Search

Social Security is in jeopardy, private pension systems have fallen apart, and workers are trying to save on their own for retirement with the stock market in the worst shape since the Great Depression. In The Predictable Surprise, Sylvester J. Schieber shows that forewarnings of the coming retirement crisis have been apparent for decades, but we have never mustered the political will to address the problem. This book explains how we have gotten into the retirement predicament and where we can go from here. Schieber, a renowned authority on this topic, provides a compact, insightful history of Social Security, pension plans, and other retirement options, highlighting both their original justifications and the point when things began to go wrong. He brings his discussion right up to the present morass and concludes with suggestions as to how we can reform our retirement system. Our situation is not hopeless, Schieber concludes, if we take on some of these issues and resolve them. If we do not, we will severely jeopardize the prosperity of younger generations.

The world is getting older and no one knows exactly what life will be like in tomorrow's older societies. But we do know that age dependency ratios - the ratio of retirees to workers - will be much higher than we see today. The implications of this trend are plain. The combined effects of fewer workers, more retirees and longer retirement periods threaten not only the sustainability of pension systems but also the broader economic prospects of many developed countries. This book describes trends in birth rates, longevity and labor force participation and productivity, the cross-border flow of capital, the globalization of labor markets, the financial viability of social insurance programs, and the ways economic output is shared between working-age and retiree populations. Our most effective solution will likely be a multifaceted one: more workers, longer careers, higher productivity, and more global exchange and cooperation.