Welcome to the latest edition of This Week in Pensions! Each week we gather the best stories about pensions and retirement security. This is the news you need to know in the fight for a secure retirement.
Here are this week’s top stories:
- Outside Review Says NY Pension Fund Responsible, Needs Staff by Michael Virtanen: an independent review of New York’s Common Retirement Fund found that the pension fund was making responsible investment decisions, but recommended hiring more in-house staff to manage the investment decisions of the fund. On net, this should reduce costs to the fund by paying fewer fees to outside advisors.
- Public pension plans better for retirees’ needs, report says by Marlene Satter: a new report this week from the National Institute on Retirement Security finds that public pensions offer a fairly high degree of portability for public employees when they change jobs. Despite the claims of anti-pension ideologues, pensions remain the best retirement plan for working families.
- In Minnesota, a commitment to intergenerational fairness by Laurie Hacking and Dave Bergstrom: throughout the country, people are living longer, which is a good thing except that it means providing pension benefits for longer, which raises the costs of pensions. The leaders of Minnesota’s largest public pensions have proposed a plan to share the costs so that pensions will be preserved for future generations. As they say:
“We believe that a defined benefit pension plan is by far the best retirement safety net for public employees. Together with Social Security and personal savings, pension plans help reduce elder poverty by providing modest but stable retirement income.”
- Kitchen Table Politics: Can Americans Afford To Retire? By Farai Chideya: finally this week, the website FiveThirtyEight takes a look at the question of whether most Americans can afford to retire. This elections podcast features a debate between Andrew Biggs and Christian Weller. They discus the decline of defined benefit pensions in the private sector and the impact this has had on Americans’ retirement security.
Be sure to check back next week for the latest news in the fight for a secure retirement!
