SCEPA's Retirement Equity Lab, led by economist and retirement expert Teresa Ghilarducci, researches the causes and consequences of the retirement crisis that exposes millions of American workers to experiencing downward mobility in retirement.
Retirement Equity Lab (ReLab)
ReLab Insights
Older Households' Financial Fragility
The slow return to normalcy after the Covid-19 pandemic has brought back a perennial risk to older workers’ wellbeing: financial fragility.
How EITC Could Benefit Low-Income Older Workers
Brief— SCEPA's research finds nearly 1.5 million low-income older workers would benefit from an expansion of the popular Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program. The report—released by our Retirement Equity Lab (ReLab)—finds without expanding the EITC, the program actually lowers wages among non-educated workers, especially those over 55.
Older Workers Are Forced Out of The Workforce
Research Note— New research shows that even before the COVID-19 recession, 55.3 percent of workers age 55 and up in the bottom half of the income distribution were forced to leave the workforce and 32.4 percent in the next 40% of the income distribution – the middle class – were forced out of work in old age.
Resource Library
A Social Security Bridge Option Would Help Reduce Early-Claiming Penalties For Those With Retirement Savings
Policy Note | The Social Security benefit structure penalizes people who claim before age 70. Yet over one-fifth of eligible people claim before their full retirement age (age 67 for those born in 1960), and over 90 percent claim before the maximum age of 70, resulting in reduced monthly benefits. While many claim early out of necessity, financial advisors often recommend to those with retirement savings to spend down their savings before tapping into Social Security to increase their lifetime...
Older Workers Claim Social Security While Working, Upending Beliefs About Raising the Retirement Age
Policy Note | Challenging the widespread assumption that people claim their retirement benefits only when they retire, more than one-fifth of older workers in the United States start claiming Social Security benefits as soon as they are eligible, even while working for pay. Low-income older workers are more than three times as likely as high-income workers to claim early, indicating a reliance on Social Security payments to supplement low wages. Those who claim before the full retirement age...
High Rents Increasingly Becoming a Driver of Financial Fragility for Low-income Older Households
Policy Note | In the United States, high overall rates of home ownership among households aged 55–64 obscure a vital reality. Many low-income older households risk financial fragility because they are renters and high rent burdens inhibit their ability to save for emergencies. Even middle- and high-income households who own their own homes risk housing-related financial fragility due to high mortgage debt. Overall rates of financial fragility, which include non-housing debt and emergency...
Retirement Tools
Older Workers and Retirement Chartbook
The Older Workers and Retirement Chartbook from the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis and the Economic Policy Institute shows the risks to retirement security and disparities in retirement preparedness.
Chartbook: Retirement Insecurity and Falling Bargaining Power
Brief— ReLab's chartbook documenting retirement insecurity and the decline in older workers' bargaining power is a resource for workers, employers, media, policymakers, scholars, and the broader public to answer questions about the state of older working America and retirement income security.
Guaranteed Retirement Accounts - How They Work
"A Primer on GRAs and How They Work" explains how Guaranteed Retirement Accounts address the retirement crisis.
