Center for American Progress

Don’t blame yourself; retirement crisis stems from bad policies not bad habits
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Don’t blame yourself; retirement crisis stems from bad policies not bad habits

Christian Weller writes that without a serious commitment from policymakers to address the retirement crisis, Americans’ retirement security will not improve.

Americans are looking at a looming retirement crisis. Based on 2013 data, more than half of all working-age households were expected to fall short of maintaining their living standards in retirement, up from less than one-third just three decades before. This growing retirement insecurity follows past policy decisions that have commonly exposed people to more risks, just as labor and financial market risks became more pronounced. Policy failed to help people build sturdy life rafts, just as the perfect storm went underway.

In other words, it’s not you. It’s policy makers that created the retirement crisis and it’s incumbent on policy makers to solve this crisis. Yet policy makers have been noticeably absent from the conversation, leaving many Americans to worry about their retirement on their own.

The above excerpt was originally published in MarketWatch. Click here to view the full article.

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Authors

Christian E. Weller

Senior Fellow