[lbo-talk] PDF of Fed Reserve economists' paper saying Americans save TOO MUCH for retirement

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 2/19/07, B. <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Apparently the PDF file of the "recent study conducted
> by Paul Smith and Lucy McNair of the Federal Reserve
> Board, and David Love, an economist at Williams
> College, whofound that 88 percent of all households
> with breadwinners over age 51 had accumulated
> sufficient resources to finance adequate consumption
> in retirement"
>
> --is here:
>
> http://www.albany.edu/econ/Research/fall06/1027.pdf

Like the other paper that Simon Archer mentioned (cf.
<http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~scholz/Research/Optimality.pdf>), the most
optimistic estimate in this paper also assumes that retirees are not
only willing to "fully consume all forms of wealth, including
nonfinancial forms such as housing"
(<http://www.albany.edu/econ/Research/fall06/1027.pdf>, p. 10) but
able to do so to attain (what they think of as) optimal savings for
consumption in retirement, the key assumption that probably won't hold
up for many.  Glad that the Fed has yet to endorse such a view!
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>