Financing Retirement
With fewer protections and guardrails, we have a much less effective system. The most extraordinary development in the U.S. private sector retirement system is not the shift away from old-fashioned defined benefit plans, which began around 1980 and is virtually complete today, but rather the movement away from 401(k) plans, which replaced the defined benefit…
What can go wrong? Being in a couple complicates your decision-making. From an economist’s perspective, one advantage of marriage is the financial benefits. Marriage allows risk sharing between partners (e.g., one partner can work more if the other loses their job) and allows couples to take advantage of returns to scale (i.e., it’s cheaper to…
