View Research by Author - Serena Lei

Publications

As the US housing market experiences its largest contraction since the Great Depression, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center took a closer look at the consequences of this crisis for state and local governments in a May 2010 conference. This article summarizes the conference events.

A key driver of persistent poverty is a lack of savings and assets. While public assistance can help families, assets give families the means to help themselves. Rather than thinking in isolation about each asset—education, homeownership, or retirement savings—policies to combat poverty or build wealth should account for people's needs and ability to acquire assets over a lifetime. To help craft a more inclusive wealth-building policy, this brief seeks evidence from typical lifecycle saving patterns and draws on suggestions from a roundtable of asset, education, housing, and retirement policy experts.

Increasing older people's employment rates could reduce the economic pressures of an aging population, and many older adults say they want to delay retirement. Yet, numerous public policies and private practices continue to encourage early retirement. The Urban Institute, with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, sponsored an October 2007 roundtable to examine the value of older adults' work. Researchers, practitioners, employers, and policymakers discussed the potential supply of and demand for older workers, the benefits of working longer, barriers to continued employment, and policy solutions to encourage work at older ages. This document summarizes the issues and discussion.

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