Reimagining Pensions The Next 40 Years

Olivia S. Mitchell, International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor; Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy; Professor of Insurance and Risk Management; Executive Director, Pension Research Council, Wharton School,Richard C. Shea, Partner, Covington & Burling, LLP

Olivia S. Mitchell is International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor of Insurance/Risk Management, Professor of Business Economics/Public Policy, Executive Director of the Pension Research Council, and Director of the Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement Research at the Wharton School. Concurrently Dr. Mitchell is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Co-Investigator for the Health and Retirement Study at the University of Michigan. Her main areas of research and teaching are pensions, insurance and risk management, public finance, and labor markets, with an international focus. She received her B.A. in Economics from Harvard University and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.


Richard C. Shea is chair of Covington & Burling LLP's Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation practice, where he is widely regarded as a leading authority on cash balance, pension equity, and other complex benefit plan designs. Previously, he served as Associate Benefits Tax Counsel at the Treasury Department, where, together with his colleagues at the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service, he was responsible for developing federal tax legislation and regulations governing employee benefits and executive compensation. He received his AB from Amherst College and his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law.

1. Introduction: Changing Frameworks for Retirement Security, Olivia S. Mitchell
Part I: Assessing the Retirement System: Adequacy, Efficiency, and Stability
2. Are Retirees Falling Short? Reconciling the Conflicting Evidence, Alicia H. Munnell, Matthew S. Rutledge, and Anthony Webb
3. Retirement Plans and Prospects for Retirement Income Adequacy, Jack VanDerhei
4. The Changing Concept of Retirement, Julia Coronado
5. Entitlement Reforms and Implications for Pensions, Eugene C. Steuerle, Pamela Perun, and Benjamin H. Harris
Part II: New Thinking about Retirement Risk Sharing
6. Risk Sharing Alternatives for Pension Plan Design, Anna Rappaport and Andrew Peterson
7. Pension Benefit Plan Design Innovation: Labor Unions as Agents of Change, David Blitzstein
8. Back to the Future: Hybrid Co-op Pensions and the TIAA-CREF System, David P. Richardson and Benjamin Goodman
9. Retirement Shares Plan: A New Model of Risk Sharing, Don Fuerst
10. The Portfolio Pension Plan: An Alternative Model for Retirement Security, Richard C. Shea, Robert S. Newman, and Jonathan P. Goldberg
11. Cultivating Pension Plans, John Vine
Part III: Pension Reform: Lessons from Abroad
12. The Promise of Defined Ambition Plans: Lessons for the United States, A. Lans Bovenberg, Theo E. Nijman, and Roel Mehlkopf
13. Insights from Switzerland's Pension System, Monika Butler
14. The Australian Retirement Income System: Lessons for the United States, Rafal Chomik and John Piggott
15. Singapore's Social Security Savings System: A Review and Some Observations for the United States, Benedict S. K. Koh