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Publications by C. Eugene Steuerle for Retirement Policy

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More about C. Eugene Steuerle's areas of expertise can be found on this Urban Institute expert's page.

Despite decades of significant tax subsidies for pensions and retirement accounts, most Americans retire with little or no pension saving. This paper suggests that it is possible to create a "Super Simple" saving plan that would provide a basic, low-cost, easily administrable plan with the potential to increase significantly the retirement assets available to moderate- and middle-income individuals. This plan follows the lead of a new system about to be implemented in the United Kingdom, which features automatic contribution for employees who do not opt out, a significant government match, and simplification of existing rules amongst other elements.

Growing fiscal pressures and increasing life expectancy have prompted calls to raise retirement ages. Some fear this change might harm long-career, lower-wage workers. Tying retirement benefit eligibility to years of service might protect low-wage workers who start their careers early. But higher disability rates and greater employment volatility could offset lower-wage workers’ early labor force starts. Using survey data matched to administrative records, we describe how work histories vary by gender, education, and other characteristics. We find that years of service are not likely to effectively protect the lowest-wage workers, as those with the least education also work the least.

The authors of this paper—longtime federal budget and policy experts—were drawn together by a deep concern about the nation's long-term fiscal outlook. Despite diverse philosophies and political leanings, they found solid common ground and agree that unsustainable deficits in the federal budget threaten the health and vigor of the American economy and the first step toward establishing budget responsibility is to reform the budget decision process so that the major drivers of escalating deficits—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—are no longer on autopilot. The paper provides specific policy recommendations and outlines the reasons action is critical.

Fiscal policy is out of control. Programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, have design features that push up spending faster than the growth of revenues. It is time to change the course of the automatic pilot driving these programs. To do so, policymakers can develop “triggers” that automatically curb spending. Triggers will level the playing field between programs that have large automatic growth and those where growth or even maintenance of effort cannot be obtained without new legislation. The paper examines triggers employed to reform Social Security in other advanced democracies and explores design options for an optimal trigger.

In this Baltimore Sun commentary, senior fellow Eugene Steuerle argues that the democratic process is imperiled by retirement, health, and taxation promises that will be very difficult to keep.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have once again expanded the services provided under Medicare. New coverage of ultrasound monitoring of cardiac output today, new treatments for congestive heart failure yesterday, and, undoubtedly, some new cancer treatment tomorrow. New technology might even help reduce Medicare costs, though past history argues against that rosy result for most improvements. Getting more usually means paying more.

Social Security spouse and survivor benefits advantage single-earner families relative to dual-earner families paying the same total taxes. Our paper considers earnings sharing—through which husbands' and wives' earnings records are combined and averaged throughout their marriage when computing benefits—as well as other changes to spouse/survivor benefits, including caregiver credits and minimum benefits. All the roughly cost-equivalent packages examined improve adequacy and horizontal equity compared to current law. The earnings-sharing proposal, however, only reduced poverty with significant adjustments to the treatment of surviving spouses. The packages reveal tradeoffs among beneficiary groups, with particular tensions around work and marital status.

This study reports on trends in federal spending on children from 1960 to 2017, looking across over 100 major federal programs, including tax credits and exemptions. Children's spending increasingly shifted from broad-based programs to programs targeting low-income or special needs children over the 1960 to 2006 period. Thirteen major programs enacted between 1960 and 2006, which include Medicaid, the earned income tax credit, and Food Stamps, comprised 65 percent of federal spending on children in 2006. Overall, federal children's spending increased in real terms from $53 billion in 1960 to $333 billion in 2006, or from 1.9 to 2.6 percent of GDP. Yet as a share of federal domestic spending, children's spending declined from 20.1 to 15.4 percent. Meanwhile, spending on the automatically growing, non-child portions of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, nearly quadrupled from 2.0 to 7.6 percent of GDP ($58 billion to $993 billion) over the same time period. Over the next ten years, children's programs are scheduled to decline both as a share of GDP and domestic spending, because they do not compete on a level playing field with these rapidly growing entitlement programs.

Social Security's projected financial shortfall has spurred discussions about increasing the age at which workers can first receive retirement benefits. This brief examines the future distributional impacts of raising the retirement age by about three years. Raising the retirement age hits lower-income workers less hard than other groups because the disability program provides some protection. However, it still increases poverty rates. Combining the retirement age change with an enhanced minimum benefit increases lifetime benefits for the lowest earners and substantially cuts the Social Security deficit without significantly increasing poverty rates.

In testimony before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, senior fellow C. Eugene Steuerle explained how, in recent decades, the government has wound a straightjacket around federal spending and tax subsidies. The main culprits have been in the broad areas of retirement, health, and taxation. Left alone, it leaves Congress with almost no control over its own budget. Only major systemic reform can restore a normal democratic process. He also highlighted ten consequences of the current budgetary situation.

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