Why do only a minority of Americans feel that they have saved adequately for their retirement? Little is known about why people fail to plan for retirement and whether wide variations in Americans’ financial knowledge may affect their decisions about how much to save and which investments to hold.

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As average life expectancy continues to rise, we must move away from "traditional" definitions of retirement.

Sound retirement security policy for future retirees requires planning. Workers need to be engaged; employers need to be responsible; and policymakers must ensure that pension law, tax law, and the Social Security system operate in a manner that promotes opportunities for private saving, appropriate retirement asset management, and sustainability and predictability.

Social Security should be reoriented, to a degree at least, to focus more closely on its safety net and poverty protection elements.

Last year, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, also known as the “super committee,” failed to agree on over a trillion dollars in budget cuts. This failure has triggered the looming “sequestration” of an additional $500 billion in defense dollar cuts over the next 10 years, among other mechanical cuts to other parts of the budget

This article illustrates replacement rates using four measures of preretirement earnings.

Former Social Security Administration official Andrew G. Biggs explains what spending cuts mean for the future of the program.