Downhill from Here
Retirement Insecurity in the Age of Inequality
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A sharp examination of the looming financial catastrophe of retirement in America.
As millions of Baby Boomers reach their golden years, the state of retirement in America is little short of a disaster. Nearly half the households with people aged 55 and older have no retirement savings at all. The real estate crash wiped out much of the home equity that millions were counting on to support their retirement. And the typical Social Security check covers less than 40% of pre-retirement wages—a number projected to drop to under 28% within two decades. Old-age poverty, a problem we thought was solved by the New Deal, is poised for a resurgence.
With dramatic statistics and vivid portraits, acclaimed sociologist Katherine S. Newman shows that the American retirement crisis touches us all, cutting across class lines and generational divides. White-collar managers have seen retirement benefits vanish; Teamsters have had their pensions cut in half; bankrupt cities like Detroit have walked away from their commitments to municipal workers. And for Generation X, the prospects are even worse: a fifth of them expect to never be able to retire. Only the vaunted “one percent” can face retirement without fear.
Other countries are confronting similar demographic challenges, yet they have not abandoned their social contract with seniors. Downhill From Here makes it clear that America, too, can—and must—do better.
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Newman, who wrote about the working poor in No Shame in My Game, turns in this compassionate study to the erosion of that formerly reliable social safety net: the pension. Newman profiles workers who spent their careers sacrificing higher salaries or glamorous jobs for the security they believed came with union or government employment, only to find the rug pulled out from under them when their pensions were revealed to be underfunded. Retirement-age people, many ill equipped to find a job in a competitive market, make up the fastest-growing segment of the labor force, according to Newman. Meanwhile, younger workers are frequently not offered the retirement benefits their parents and grandparents enjoyed not because of foreign competition or market downturns but because resources are being diverted to shareholders causing intergenerational resentment. Newman finds that countries faring better than the United States in postretirement well-being Denmark, the Netherlands, and Australia among them have mandatory government pensions (and, in Australia's case, a mandatory retirement savings program). She concludes by emphatically advocating for Paul Krugman's solution to future Social Security insolvency eliminate the cap on income subject to payroll taxes. Newman's reportage moves gracefully between pension instability's effects upon individual lives and the societal consequences. This is an empathetic and revealing investigation.
