Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/GaryTBurtless

This report details the development of a third version of MINT (Modeling Income in the Near Term), a tool for simulating the retirement incomes of members of the Baby Boom and neighboring cohorts. MINT3 can produce projections of economic and demographic characteristics in the year 2020, at the time of retirement, and for other years and ages. It can be used both to construct a baseline using alternative economic and demographic assumptions and to analyze the distributional consequences of a variety of Social Security policy changes.

This paper describes recent developments in pension coverage and explains several proposals that can increase the percentage of the active workforce participating in employer-sponsored pensions. The first section analyzes the underlying economic and organizational forces that influence private pension coverage and examines the legal and economic barriers that limit employers' willingness to offer pension plans. The second section describes policy reforms proposed by President Carter's Commission on Pension Policy. Finally, the authors analyze several proposals for legislative reform.

We know that earnings inequality in the U.S. has been increasing for the past 20 years. This report examines what we know about the underlying causes of this trend, including globalization and the increased importance of technological skills in the workplace. The authors offer policy suggestions to reverse this harmful trend.

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