August 2022

Planets aligning for U.S. pension funds to offload their liability risk

U.S. corporate pension plans have reached a sweet spot in their derisking journeys that will enable them to pull the trigger on pension risk transfer transactions, including plan terminations. Their funding levels have risen primarily due to rising interest rates that are lowering pension liabilities even as plan assets have fallen due to the challenging return environment that has characterized the first half of 2022. "For corporate pension plans, this what they've been waiting for, for years," said Michael Moran, New...

Changes in Retirement Savings During the COVID Pandemic

By Elena Derby, Lucas Goodman, Kathleen Mackie & Jacob Mortenson This paper documents changes in retirement saving patterns at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We construct a large panel of US tax data, including tens of millions of person-year observations, and measure retirement savings contributions and withdrawals. We use these data to document several important changes in retirement savings patterns during the pandemic relative to prior years, and we compare these results to changes in savings patterns during the...

U.S. $7T Retirement Crisis Is Only Getting Worse

Americans have been warned for years of an impending retirement crisis. Yet the situation is getting worse. Even when everything was going right — inflation was nonexistent, interest rates were low and stocks were in an extended bull market — there was a multi-trillion dollar savings shortfall. Read more Inflation Moderately Pressures US Public Pension Liabilities Then came a pandemic, war in Europe, decades-high inflation, the fastest rate-hiking cycle since the early 1980s and fears of a recession. The resulting market turmoil...

Inflation Moderately Pressures US Public Pension Liabilities

The high inflation environment in the US is likely to have only moderately negative effects on state and local government public pension plan liabilities via automatic cost of living adjustment (COLA) mechanisms but will pressure plans through weakening asset performance and rising payroll costs, Fitch Ratings says. Market value smoothing and supplemental pension contributions by some governments this year from budget surpluses will help partially mitigate these challenges. While automatic COLA provisions differ across plans, those plans that provide them...

Commentary: The U.S. and Mexico need a binational retirement policy

By Jacqueline L. Angel & Emma Aguila Population aging is complicating retirement planning for Americans, and specifically for immigrants. As a 2017 National Academy of Science study showed, Mexican immigrants who arrive at older ages often struggle to support themselves in the United States and often consider returning home. Yet we lack a binational retirement policy that addresses those concerns. We need bilateral agreements that enable Medicare coverage in Mexico, and a Social Security “totalization” agreement allowing Mexican workers in the...

U.S. public pensions suffer worst year since the financial crisis

An ugly start to the year for stocks and bonds has put a dent in the retirement plans of millions of state and local employees. U.S. public pension plans saw big losses during this year’s market rout, with median losses totaling 7.9% for the year ended June 30, according to data from institutional investment consultant Wilshire Associates. This marked worst annual performance — and first annual decline — for public retirement systems since 2009, according to Wilshire's data. Plans worth over $1...

Clorox to terminate primary U.S. pension plan

The Clorox Co., Oakland, Calif., is terminating is primary U.S. pension plan. The household products company's board of directors approved the resolution May 17 to terminate the plan, according to its 10-K filing with the SEC on Wednesday. The company plans to settle the plan with a combination of lump sums to participants and the purchase of a group annuity contract from an insurance company to transfer the remaining assets and liabilities, the filing said. The completion of the termination is expected...

Labor Supply Flexibility and Portfolio Selection with Early Retirement Option

By Junkee Jeon & Jehan Oh In this paper, we study an optimal consumption and investment problem of an economic agent who can choose flexible labor supply and an option to early retire in the existence of mandatory retirement date. We model the agent's preference as the Cobb-Douglas utility, which is a function of consumption and leisure, and consider the agent's unit wage rate as a stochastic process. The optimization problem has a feature of combining both stochastic control and...

U.S. University launches degree that prepares students to address aging society’s growing health care needs

UTSA will launch a new bachelor of science degree program in Health, Aging & Society this fall. The new program, which will be offered through the College for Health, Community and Policy (HCAP), will be the first of its kind in the San Antonio area and is designed to address the growing need for health care support occupations and community- and social-service professionals. Students will learn critical skills to begin a career focused on managing and coordinating hospitals, nursing homes...

June Slump Causes $262 Billion Drop in U.S. Public Pensions’ Assets

Large public pension funds had a difficult second quarter, as the 100 largest U.S. public pension plans lost a combined $262 billion in funding during June, according to actuarial and consulting firm Milliman. The deficit between the estimated assets and liabilities widened to $1.521 trillion at the end of the month from $1.259 trillion at the end of May, as the public funds’ asset value dropped to $4.318 trillion from $4.566 trillion. crisisRead also U.S. public pensions suffer worst year since...