Working Longer: The Solution to the Retirement Income Challenge by Alicia H. Munnell and Steven A. Sass

I just read a review of Working Longer: The Solution to the Retirement Income Challenge by Alicia H. Munnell and Steven A. Sass -- "Who Wants to Retire Later? (Don’t Laugh)" by Harry Hurt III published in the New York Times on July 20, 2008.

These two highly qualified individuals -- Sass is associate director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and Munnell is director of the Center for Retirement Research, the Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, and a former member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton -- estimate that people who retire at age 65 today can expect Social Security to provide the equivalent of only 39 percent of their incomes after deductions for basic Medicare contributions while those who plan to retire later can expect declining net benefits.

Clearly, Social Security will not be available for people in my generation and it will be interesting to see how our parents generation copes with retirement or lack of retirement.

Click here to view the table of contents or click here to read an excerpt -- both courtesy of Brookings Institute Press (the publisher).