Baby Boomers' Retirement Could Be a Bust; Living Standards May Drop As Social Security Rolls Bulge FINAL Edition

• Published in: The Washington post
• Main Author: Spencer, Rich
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, D.C WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post 27.06.1995
• Subjects: Baby boomers; Beverly Duncan; Clinton, Bill; Karen Ferguson; Robert B. Reich
• ISSN: 0190-8286

Duncan's case illustrates one scenario in a raging public debate on whether baby boomers, who will reach age 65 from 2011 to 2030, are saving enough and earning enough pension credits to live well in retirement. It is a 21st century problem with very immediate political consequences. Both the Republican Congress and the Democratic Clinton administration have proposed broad cuts in the growth of Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly, to keep it from going bust. A further budget crisis looms over the Social Security system, which faces potential bankruptcy when the baby boom generation joins the rolls. If the boomers are not saving for their old age and the federal government reduces benefits to the elderly, then many experts believe the nation will confront an extremely painful choice in the next century: "dramatically reduced living standards for baby boomer retirees" as they leave jobs and drop to much lower incomes when they retire, as the Committee for Economic Development (CED) puts it, "or intolerable tax burdens on working Americans" to help support the disproportionately large retired population represented by the boomers. "America's retirement system is underfunded, overregulated, and soon to be challenged by unprecedented growth in retirement-age population," declares a gloomy report by the CED, a nonprofit business research group. "Private saving for retirement is woefully inadequate, and national saving has declined. Underfunded pension promises in both the private and public retirement programs are a growing and often understated problem."