Social Security helps Black individuals and those with low educational attainment – and therefore low earnings – through its progressive benefit structure.  On the other hand, the nature of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) as a life annuity inherently increases expected lifetime benefits for individuals who tend to live longer.  Regardless of how these factors…

A common refrain among retirement researchers is that longer careers are the best way to ensure an adequate retirement.  This refrain is often directed at the workers themselves – “you need to work longer!”  And that message seems to have been getting through.  Since the 1990s, the labor force participation rates of older individuals hav…

The headlines from the 2023 Medicare Trustees Re­port were that the Hospital Insurance (HI) program faces a long-term deficit and will deplete its trust fund reserves in 2031 and that the rest of the Medicare program will require increasing amounts of general revenues. While true, the outlook for program costs is considerably more favorable than…