There is no doubt that America’s middle class faces a retirement crisis. More than half of working-age families can expect to make substantial and potentially harmful cuts in their spending when they retire—up from less than one-third in the early 1980s.
How did we get here? Christian Weller, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, makes the case in his new book—Retirement on the Rocks: Why Americans Can’t Get Ahead and How New Savings Policies Can Help —that policymakers have failed to empower Americans to save and protect their savings at a time of growing economic risk and insecurity. While labor, financial, and housing markets continue to be more unstable, policymakers have taken away key risk protections and ignored the need for additional ones. But because the retirement crisis is the result of broken public policies, there is a better policy path forward.
Please join the Center for American Progress for a discussion with Weller and Elizabeth Olson, contributing writer for The New York Times, about the range of realistic policies that can address the retirement crisis in a meaningful way and build real retirement security for American families.
Introductory Remarks:
Carmel Martin, Executive Vice President for Policy, Center for American Progress
Featured Author:
Christian E. Weller, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress; Professor of Public Policy, McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston
Moderated by:
Elizabeth Olson, Contributing Writer, The New York Times