BC Bookmarks

Falling Short: The Coming Retirement Crisis and What to Do About It (Oxford University Press, 2015), a new book by co-authored by retirement experts at Boston College, serves as both a wake-up call to Americans and policymakers about the coming shortfall in retirement savings and a call to action regarding changes that can be enacted to address the issue. Written by BC Center for Retirement Research Director Alicia Munnell, CRR Associate Director Andrew Eschtruth and investment consultant Charles Ellis, Falling Short predicts that without corrective action, millions of retirees will find that they have too little in savings. “We need more retirement income because people are living longer, they face rapidly rising health care costs, and rates of return are really low so they need a bigger pile of money,” says Munnell, the Drucker Professor in the Carroll School of Management. “At the same time that people need more, retirement resources are going down. Social Security will provide less relative to earnings before retirement; the 401(k) system, which could work, has very modest balances; and people don’t use their houses, which is often their major asset. So we’re approaching this big mismatch and people are going to be shocked and fall short of their standard of living when they get to retirement.” For more details, see these articles: Boston Globe | Boston College Chronicle | Money