NewRetirement Retirement News Digest : Intergenerational

The importance of long term healthcare

jberman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:18:00 GMT

KGO News, November 18th, 2009

Can you afford NOT to have long term care? The long term care crisis and its impact on your family's future financial security.

Long term care crisis:

The cost of long term care can severely impact your family's future financial security. Requiring care in any setting is not a topic many of us want to talk about, for obvious reasons. But the fact is, 40 percent of Americans who need long term care are working age adults 18-64 - and this care comes with a very steep price tag.

For example, according to recent data from Genworth Financial the national average cost for one year of home care is more than $42,000.

According to Dr. Dychtwald's research, the biggest financial worry among the 55-and-older population is covering uninsured medical expenses during retirement.

Dychtwald adds that today people are living longer than ever before and this longevity revolution is creating an unprecedented "age wave." However, living longer creates a greater possibility of health issues along the way and the burden of care giving usually falls to the closest relative.

The key steps needed to secure financial peace of mind:

There are three things that the average individual ought to be thinking about when it comes to long-term care in terms of next steps.

Talk to your family members, this shouldn't be some sort of secret or something that people aren't comfortable discussing. You know it's... it's a fact of life in this more lived era.
Talk to a financial professional and that could be an insurance agent, a broker, an accountant, a lawyer, maybe you got a brother-in-law or a cousin who's in the business, talk to them about long-term care.
Don't just leave it vague and in the mist, write it down, take steps, make a plan and then execute against that plan.

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Experiencing Life, Briefly, Inside a Nursing Home

jberman — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:59:00 GMT

The New York Times, August 23rd, 2009

For 10 days in June, Kristen Murphy chose to live somewhere she and many others fear: a nursing home.

Ms. Murphy, who is in perfect health, had to learn the best way to navigate a wheelchair around her small room, endure the humiliation that comes with being helped in the bathroom, try to sleep through night checks and become attuned to the emotions of her fellow residents.

And Ms. Murphy, 38, had to explain to friends, family and fellow patients why she was there.

Ms. Murphy, a medical student at the University of New England in Biddeford, Me., who is interested in geriatric medicine, came to New York for a novel program that allowed her to experience life as a nursing home patient.

Students are given a “diagnosis” of an ailment and expected to live as someone with the condition does. They keep a daily journal chronicling their experiences and, in most cases, debunking their preconceived notions.

The program started in 2005 after a student approached Dr. Marilyn Gugliucci, the director of geriatrics education at the medical school. “ ‘Dr. G,’ ” she recalled the student saying, “ ‘I would like to learn how to speak with institutionalized elders.’ What came out of my mouth was, ‘Will you live in a nursing home for two weeks?’ ”

To Dr. Gugliucci’s surprise, she found nursing homes in the region that were willing to participate and students who were willing to volunteer. No money is exchanged between the school and nursing homes, and the homes agree to treat students like regular patients.

“My motivation is really to have somebody from the inside tell us what it’s like to be a resident,” said Rita Morgan, administrator of the Sarah Neuman Center for Healthcare and Rehabilitation here, one of the four campuses of Jewish Home Lifecare.

“But she is really there to study herself, her own feelings about living in a nursing home,” Ms. Morgan added, referring to Ms. Murphy.

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Message on long-term health care - plan ahead

jberman — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 07:50:00 GMT

Birmingham Post, August 6th, 2009

Anyone faced with funding long-term health care should look beyond equity release schemes or selling their homes.

That is the message from a West Midland firm of independent financial advisers keen to show that forward planning can be the answer to the care “lottery” for many pensioners.

Whether fees are met by local authorities or families often depends on where home care residents live, says McCarthy Taylor, which has offices in Worcester and Evesham.

Although the Government has introduced means testing, inconsistencies persist and many elderly people, often with severe illnesses, end up having to pay for long-term care themselves.

And even though reforms were announced this week to the funding of social care, they will would not cover accommodation costs for those in care homes, only the care element.

Given the economic situation, health ministers also said there was no chance of a new system being phased in before 2014 at the earliest.

Clive Collins, of McCarthy Taylor, says that, as care costs soar, many people are turning to equity release or are being forced to sell their homes.

“These, however, are not the only options available and, with careful financial planning, assets can be saved to pass down to future generations,” he said.

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Making Home a Safer Place, Affordably

jberman — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:23:00 GMT

The New York Times, July 17th, 2009

Stay put or sell?

That’s the question many older people ponder as they move into their 70s and beyond.

Most older people settle on staying put, according to a recent survey by the Home Safety Council, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing home-related injuries. (From the source of the survey, you can see where this column is heading, right?)

Staying put makes economic sense. It is not only more comfortable to live out your life in your own home, it’s much more affordable.

The average annual fee at an assisted-living facility — a place where older people live independently but also receive a host of services like medication monitoring and meals — is $34,000. And in the nation’s most expensive metropolitan areas, including New York, the costs may be closer to $70,000.

But while home might be cozier and cheaper than a residential center, it’s not always safer. Every year in this country about 7,000 elderly people die in home-related accidents, and millions are seriously injured. Falls are the leading cause of injuries, but the elderly are also at risk for being burned by the stove, scalded by hot water or drowning in the tub.

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Our Parents’ Keepers

jberman — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:57:00 GMT

Bostonia, July 8th, 2009

At a certain point in her forties, Paula Span noticed that the conversation among her friends had changed: it was less about growing toddlers, day care, and pediatricians, and more about aging parents, assisted living, and geriatricians. When Span lost her mother to cancer, the subject became even more pressing — she worried about how her father, now in his eighties, would cope on his own. “It began to seem like my generation of baby boomers was coming up on this life-cycle event that few of us were prepared for,” says Span (COM’71).

A former reporter at the Washington Post and now a contributing writer for the Washington Post Magazine, Span spent two and a half years researching the topic and interviewing subjects for a book she hopes will fill in the gaps. In When the Time Comes: Families with Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions (Springboard Press, 2009), she follows several families as they grapple with caregiving for elderly parents who can no longer live independently. “I wanted to encounter them when they were still facing the problem of what do we do about Mom, where should she live, what can we afford, how does she feel about it,” says Span, who also teaches journalism at Columbia University and writes the The New Old Age blog for the New York Times Web site. “And I wanted to talk to the parents to see what they thought about making changes and how they determined which ones were acceptable and which weren’t.”

Span says her book is not a how-to manual, but rather a “survey of the landscape” as painted by the experiences of several families. “I’m just hoping that this is helpful and supportive and gives us a clue as to what lies ahead,” she says, “because there’s not a dress rehearsal for this.”

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World's 65 and older population to triple by 2050

jberman — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:39:00 GMT

Yahoo News, June 23rd, 2009

The world's 65-and-older population will triple by mid-century to 1 in 6 people, leaving the U.S. and other nations struggling to support the elderly.

The number of senior citizens has already jumped 23 percent since 2000 to 516 million, according to U.S. census estimates released on Tuesday. That is more than double the growth rate for the general population.

The world's population has been graying for many years due to declining births and medical advances that have extended life spans. As the fastest-growing age group, seniors now comprise just under 8 percent of the world's 6.8 billion people. But demographers warn the biggest shift is yet to come. They cite a coming wave of retirements from baby boomers and China's Red Guard generation that will shrink pensions and add to rising health care costs.

Germany, Italy, Japan and Monaco have the most senior citizens, with 20 percent or more of their people 65 and older.

In the U.S., residents who are 65 and older currently make up 13 percent of the population, but that will double to 88.5 million by mid-century. In two years, the oldest of the baby boomers will start turning 65. The baby boomer bulge will continue padding the senior population year after year, growing to 1 in 5 U.S. residents by 2030.

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New Hints Seen That Red Wine May Slow Aging

jberman — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:32:00 GMT

The New York Times, June 4th, 2008

Red wine may be much more potent than was thought in extending human lifespan, researchers say in a new report that is likely to give impetus to the rapidly growing search for longevity drugs.

The study is based on dosing mice with resveratrol, an ingredient of some red wines. Some scientists are already taking resveratrol in capsule form, but others believe it is far too early to take the drug, especially using wine as its source, until there is better data on its safety and effectiveness.

The report is part of a new wave of interest in drugs that may enhance longevity. On Monday, Sirtris, a startup founded in 2004 to develop drugs with the same effects as resveratrol, completed its sale to GlaxoSmithKline for $720 million.

Sirtris is seeking to develop drugs that activate protein agents known in people as sirtuins.

“The upside is so huge that if we are right, the company that dominates the sirtuin space could dominate the pharmaceutical industry and change medicine,” Dr. David Sinclair of the Harvard Medical School, a co-founder of the company, said Tuesday.

Serious scientists have long derided the idea of life-extending elixirs, but the door has now been opened to drugs that exploit an ancient biological survival mechanism, that of switching the body’s resources from fertility to tissue maintenance. The improved tissue maintenance seems to extend life by cutting down on the degenerative diseases of aging.

The reflex can be prompted by a faminelike diet, known as caloric restriction, which extends the life of laboratory rodents by up to 30 percent but is far too hard for most people to keep to and in any case has not been proven to work in humans.

Research started nearly 20 years ago by Dr. Leonard Guarente of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed recently that the famine-induced switch to tissue preservation might be triggered by activating the body’s sirtuins. Dr. Sinclair, a former student of Dr. Guarente, then found in 2003 that sirtuins could be activated by some natural compounds, including resveratrol, previously known as just an ingredient of certain red wines.

Dr. Sinclair’s finding led in several directions. He and others have tested resveratrol’s effects in mice, mostly at doses far higher than the minuscule amounts in red wine. One of the more spectacular results was obtained last year by Dr. John Auwerx of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Illkirch, France. He showed that resveratrol could turn plain vanilla, couch-potato mice into champion athletes, making them run twice as far on a treadmill before collapsing.

The company Sirtris, meanwhile, has been testing resveratrol and other drugs that activate sirtuin. These drugs are small molecules, more stable than resveratrol, and can be given in smaller doses. In April, Sirtris reported that its formulation of resveratrol, called SRT501, reduced glucose levels in diabetic patients.

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High-Tech Devices Keep Elderly Safe From Afar

jberman — Mon, 26 May 2008 08:09:00 GMT

New York Times, May 25th, 2008

First thing every morning, Lynn Pitet, of Cody, Wyo., checks her computer to see whether her mother, Helen Trost, has gotten out of bed, taken her medication and whether she is moving around inside her house hundreds of miles away in Minnesota.

Last summer, Mrs. Trost’s husband had a stroke and died, but she wanted to stay in the house, in Mankato, where she had lived for 36 years. She did not want a live-in helper, and she cannot drive. At 88, Mrs. Trost has macular degeneration and takes medications for seizures, memory loss and restless leg syndrome.

“She’s a feisty gal,” Mrs. Pitet said of her mother. “She is fine when she takes her medicines, but, even so, I was terrified of leaving her alone.”

Mrs. Pitet and her sister decided to become part of a small but growing number of people who have installed motion sensors and a remote monitoring system to keep aging relatives safe. Sensors attached to the wall are able to register when Mrs. Trost gets out of bed and whether she stops at her medication dispenser, and to alert her daughters to any deviations from her routine that might indicate an accident or illness. The family is updated by electronic report every morning.

Monitoring systems like these, which go far beyond the emergency response buttons that have been around for years, are not found in many homes yet. Privacy is an issue for some older people, and the basic package can range from $50 up to $85 a month for the motion sensors and remote monitoring system like Mrs. Trost uses. More comprehensive packages can include devices to track blood pressure, weight or respiration.

Experts on aging say the systems will become commonplace as the 76 million baby boomers approach ages when disabilities or conditions like diabetes and failing eyesight jeopardize the ability to live independently. The population of those 65 years and older is almost 40 million today, and the federal Census Bureau says that will more than double, to nearly 87 million, by midcentury.

Right now, there is little federal health care reimbursement for such devices. And private insurance coverage is evolving because the area is new, said Dr. Jeremy Nobel, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health who co-wrote a study on the feasibility of such technologies. “We are at the beginning stages regarding the availability of such services and before business models are developed,” said Dr. Nobel, a medical doctor. “I expect we’ll see a significant increase in the adoption of such systems in two to five years, and widespread adoption in 10 years.”

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More Than an Exercise in Vanity

jberman — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:25:00 GMT

New York Times, Mat 13th, 2008

DR. PAUL D. THOMPSON, a 60-year-old marathon runner and chief of cardiology at Hartford Hospital, stood in front of a medical audience recently and began his talk with a story about himself.

“I’ve been lifting weights since I was 12 years old and look at me,” he said. Dr. Thompson is small and wiry with not a bulging muscle on him. He speculated that he must have a genetic inability to build muscles, no matter how hard he works at it.

But are his muscles healthy?

It is not the kind of question most people ask themselves. But muscle researchers say it is important because muscle health is emerging as an important part of overall health. And, they say, when it comes to muscles, bulk does not matter. How big they can become depends on your sex as well as genetics. What matters for health is whether, like Dr. Thompson, you use them.

Healthy muscles, researchers say, are those that have been worked, stressed and pushed to their limit so that they have enough power and strength to get you through life, especially as you grow older. And keeping muscles fit takes effort, which means regular training with weight lifting and cardiovascular exercise even if the results are not a sculptured look, these experts add.

If you don’t work your muscles, they will atrophy, especially as you grow older. Older people often fall because they are too weak to brace themselves, and they have trouble with steps and opening jars because their muscles have lost so much strength. Much of that loss can be avoided, muscle researchers say. Even elderly people can gain muscle strength if they work at it, studies have shown.

There are two aspects to healthy muscles: endurance and strength, said Robert H. Fitts, an exercise physiologist at Marquette University and chairman of the biology department there. To maintain endurance, you should engage in activities that pump blood to the muscles, like walking. For strength, you need to lift weights, concentrating on what Professor Fitts calls the antigravity muscles, those of the back and legs. And, he adds, you should also maintain arm strength.

But while many people walk, fewer lift weights, and those who do often use incorrect techniques, said William J. Kraemer, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut.

Some try to do it on their own but tend to buy weights that are too light and may not know the well-researched methods that get results.

Others go to gyms, where they may be intimidated when they venture into weight rooms filled with people grunting and straining and machines that can seem daunting. Those who do try to lift at the gym can end up using weights that are not heavy enough to fully stimulate their muscles.

That is especially true of women, Dr. Kraemer said, even those who work with personal trainers. While women often say they are afraid they will bulk up, this fear is unfounded, Dr. Kraemer and others say. Acquiring muscle mass requires testosterone levels that women don’t have. Instead, the toning that many women say they want comes from lifting heavy weights.

The most effective way to stimulate muscles is with a system known as progressive resistance. This approach can take about three hours a week and includes days, once a week or so, when you lift weights so heavy that you can do only three to five repetitions before your muscles are too tired to lift again.

Other days are devoted to moderate resistance, with weights you can lift 8 to 10 times. And then you should have some light days, with weights you can lift 12 to 15 times before your muscles tire.

It may sound like a lot of effort, but even people like Dr. Thompson, who does not acquire bulk, benefit.

“I still lift,” he said, “because it makes doing other stuff — yardwork, carrying groceries, carrying grandkids — easier. “I think some folks outlive their muscles, meaning that they are fine mentally and cardiacwise but have so little muscle strength that they can’t catch themselves with their other leg when they start to fall,” Dr. Thompson added. “And if they fall they cannot get up.”

He does not want to be one of those people.

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Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain

jberman — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:22:00 GMT

New York Times, May 20th, 2008

When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong.

Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit.

The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, “Progress in Brain Research.”

Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer’s disease, for example, strikes 13 percent of Americans 65 and older. But for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful.

“It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing,” said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. “It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.”

For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean, older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but are taking it in and processing it.

When both groups were later asked questions for which the out-of-place words might be answers, the older adults responded much better than the students.

“For the young people, it’s as if the distraction never happened,” said an author of the review, Lynn Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. “But for older adults, because they’ve retained all this extra data, they’re now suddenly the better problem solvers. They can transfer the information they’ve soaked up from one situation to another.”

Such tendencies can yield big advantages in the real world, where it is not always clear what information is important, or will become important. A seemingly irrelevant point or suggestion in a memo can take on new meaning if the original plan changes. Or extra details that stole your attention, like others’ yawning and fidgeting, may help you assess the speaker’s real impact.

“A broad attention span may enable older adults to ultimately know more about a situation and the indirect message of what’s going on than their younger peers,” Dr. Hasher said. “We believe that this characteristic may play a significant role in why we think of older people as wiser.”

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Gender Gap in Retirement Savings

jberman — Thu, 15 May 2008 00:17:00 GMT

BusinessWeek, May 13th, 2008

In this roundup of B-school research: why women are better savers, it's good to talk up your rivals, and how a logo can spark ideas.

Women are more motivated than men to save for retirement, according to a recent report from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. The research, led by Tuck management professor Punam Anand Keller, found that women are driven to save because of worries that they'll have to work longer to maintain a certain lifestyle and attain medical care and a fear that they'll lose their home and be dependent on family.

Men, on the other hand, were more likely to say they would not have to stop working and believed they would need less money when they retired. Some also suggested they preferred feeling good now instead of in the future. This thinking is what prevents some from saving for retirement, says Keller, whose team conducted surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus groups for the research.

The goal of the study, says Keller, was to determine how best to market employee well-being programs, including those related to financial health. She and her team used the findings, which will appear in the book Overcoming the Saving Slump: How to Increase the Effectiveness of Financial Education and Saving Programs (University of Chicago Press, due out in Fall, 2008), to develop a program designed to motivate employees of companies to sign up for retirement saving initiatives.

A Tastier Carrot

Using a social marketing approach to saving for retirement, the researchers created a program for Dartmouth that targeted groups that were less likely to save. "I use the power of marketing and persuasion tactics to devise new savings programs for people who may be aware of the need to save, but this awareness does not translate into behavior," writes Keller in a two-page summary of the findings.

Her team offered a one-sheet explanation of how people could get started with saving, created a Web site that features real people sharing their personal stories about saving, and did what it could to lower the barriers that were preventing people from signing up for employee saving programs. For example, people who do not have a computer at the ready were using that as an excuse not to sign up, so Keller informed those who attended meetings where laptops were available nearby. "We wanted to motivate them," says Keller.

Apparently, the project was successful. As a result of these efforts, which Keller says are inexpensive for companies to initiate, the rate of Dartmouth employees electing retirement plans more than tripled in a 30-day period after the program's launch. More organizations are seeking help in this area. Keller is working with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE), and AARP to help them apply social marketing to financial planning for their members.

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Reverse mortgages aren't the only option for seniors

jberman — Tue, 13 May 2008 04:17:00 GMT

Los Angeles Times, May 11th, 2008

Reverse mortgages are one way for house-rich but cash-poor seniors to tap into their equity without having to sell. But there are other options to consider as well.

A reverse loan is intended to enable people 62 or older to convert part of the equity they have built up in their homes into tax-free income. The name is appropriate because it works backward. Instead of paying the lender every month, the lender pays the senior homeowner -- monthly, in one lump sum, in amounts as the need arises for cash or in a combination of these choices.

The amount of money is based on current interest rates, lending limits, the equity in the home, age and how long the owner can be expected to live.

No payments are due while the reverse mortgage is outstanding. It is repaid when the borrower (or, in the case of couples, the last remaining spouse) dies, sells the house or no longer occupies it as a principal residence.

The borrower can never owe more than the house is worth, no matter when he or she gives it up or whether its value has gone down. If the owner dies and the place sells for more than what is owed on the loan, the excess (after sales commissions and other selling expenses, of course) goes to the borrower's heirs or estate.

The knock on reverse mortgages is that they are expensive. But some state and local governments offer less costly versions called deferred payment loans. Generally, there are no origination fees, and insurance premiums and closing costs, if any, are very low.

The rate on these loans is low as well, if interest is charged at all. When charged, it is often on a fixed basis, meaning the rate never changes. Better yet, many programs charge simple, rather than compound, so interest isn't charged on interest. Some even forgive part or all of the loan if the borrower remains in the house for a specified period.

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'Soul Surfers' Rekindle the Love of the Longboard

jberman — Sat, 10 May 2008 09:57:00 GMT

NYTimes, May 9th, 2008

MATT Micuda was 12 in 1973 when he surfed for the first time. It was on a board that had come from a friend of the family — a Barry Kanaiaupuni model from Rick Surfboards that was made in 1968.

“I loved it immediately,” he said. “Even when I started surfing on shortboards and eventually went pro, I always had a bunch of longboards around. We always met up when the surf got small on the old boards. That was the time when we’d hang with our friends, get the gossip, talk about girls and enjoy the ocean.”

Mr. Micuda, a sign fabricator from Santa Cruz, Calif., still surfs on the old boards and claims that it’s his way of staying in touch with his love of the sport.

Staying in touch with the feelings that surfing evokes is important, because the surfing world has changed. Competitive surfing has become bigger and more exclusive, and boards and gear have become more expensive and higher tech. Prices of modern competitive boards today range from $800 to $1,200.

Luckily for Mr. Micuda, a surfing subculture that has been around for years is beginning to grow. So-called soul surfers, more concerned with the individuality of the sport, and less with the commercial aspects, are picking up the old boards in an effort to retain the original spirit of surfing.

And they gather for events like the Big Stick Logjam, one of the longest running longboard surf contests in the world, which was held April 26 and 27. This year the contest attracted more than 100 competitors, who came from all up and down the West Coast.

“Yes, it’s a competition,” said Gioni Pasquinelli, a former president of the Big Stick Surfing Association, which puts on the event. “But it’s really just a gathering of people who love old boards.”

He said the contest started about 20 years ago when some surfers began to feel that the sport had become overly dominated by new board technology. “This is an opportunity for people to share old boards, try out boards you’ve never surfed on and truly appreciate how the boards are made,” Mr. Pasquinelli said. “The cool thing about the whole event is that it really feels like another era. And that’s important for everyone to experience.”

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Empty Nest Egg

jberman — Sat, 10 May 2008 06:20:00 GMT

NYtimes, May 4th, 2008

The future of Americans’ pensions has not become a serious campaign issue so far this election season. It’s hard to get retirement issues to the front of the line when the nation faces soaring health care costs, global warming, $100-a-barrel oil, a likely recession and collapsing housing prices. There is also the little matter of the worst credit crisis since the 1930s.

That is too bad, because, as Roger Lowenstein nicely illustrates in “While America Aged,” the country “is sitting on a retirement time bomb.” He is not talking about Social Security, which, he writes, is among the more manageable of future concerns. He is addressing the large-scale failure of America’s once-enviable private pension system.

Lowenstein is one of the nation’s most talented business writers, with a particular ability to make obscure financial issues clear as the morning light. He tells three disturbing tales.

The first is about General Motors and the United Auto Workers. In the 1950s, the U.A.W., under the redoubtable Walter Reuther, won generous pension and health care benefits from G.M., eventually even securing medical coverage for retirees.

Back then, of course, no one thought the world’s premier manufacturing company would ever lose its pre-eminence. But beginning in the 1970s, market share declined inexorably while retiree rolls expanded dramatically. By the late 1990s, G.M. had 400,000 retirees compared with 180,000 workers.

With stock prices generating high returns on investments in the bullish 1990s, G.M. decided to underfund its obligations. It also perhaps too cleverly spun off its parts operations, and a lot of its pension burden, into a company called Delphi. It didn’t work. Delphi foundered, and the U.A.W. has taken over management of its own health fund, hoping to keep most of the promises made to workers. We shall see.

Lowenstein’s second example is New York City’s public transit system. Over time, the Transport Workers Union won subway workers benefits so generous they could retire by age 55. New York, however, failed to fund its pension benefits adequately, while being buffeted by economic crosswinds itself. The subway workers, despite a 2005 strike, were forced into concessions, but the city still faces huge liabilities.

The final example is the most egregious. San Diego’s municipal workers were also granted generous pension benefits. The city management then deliberately skimped on the annual contributions, hiding the underfunding from the public while the union knowingly looked the other way. The result was near bankruptcy for the once thriving metropolis.

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Report Finds Women Can Anticipate Nearly Half the Retirement Income of Men

jberman — Thu, 08 May 2008 08:14:00 GMT

FoxBusiness, May 7th, 2008

Lower compensation and less time in workforce harms women's retirement security

Women are at a much higher risk than men of facing economic uncertainty in retirement and, on average, they'll enter retirement with considerably less savings than men. Women face these unique challenges because they spend fewer years in the workforce, earn less income and have longer life spans than men, according to a report released today entitled, The Female Factor 2008: Why Women are at Greater Financial Risk in Retirement.

Multiple factors combine to cloud women's retirement security, including less time in the workforce and lower lifetime earnings then men. The report finds that women earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, which translates into a median retirement income of just 58 percent of men's. Additionally, due to family caregiving responsibilities, women are in the workforce an average of 12 years less than men. This translates into fewer years saving or participating in an employer-provided retirement plan. The median salary for a woman working full-time in 2006 was $32,515 compared to $42,261 for men. The disparity is even more dramatic for minority women, with African-American women's median income at $27,535 and Hispanic women's median income at $22,285.

Women also live, on average, five years longer than men and are far more likely than men to be widowed and living some part of their retirement years alone. Older women living alone -- whether widowed, divorced or never married -- face much higher rates of poverty than men do. Approximately one in five unmarried elderly women is poor.

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