Sometimes we forget about how Europe in general and Britain in particular , has unity within its boundaries. The United States of America don’t look too united when it comes to delivering retirement income and healthcare to their citizens.
Here is the article – the original is on this link.
The warning from educators, economists and think tanks is loud, clear and persistent: The nation’s retirement system is in need of repair. Failing to do so could mean that tens of millions of Americans in the 2050s and beyond will enter later life with little, if any, financial security.
The good news: People appear to be listening.
“I’m excited about the progress we’re seeing,”
says Angela Antonelli, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives at the McCourt School of Public Policy. In the past, she notes, decades could pass without significant retirement-system overhauls. Now, incremental gains in helping workers build savings and prepare for later life are evident in both the public and private sectors.
“We still have a long way to go, make no mistake,” she says. “But this is absolutely critical for the fiscal and economic well-being of the country going forward.”
False Hopes?
Asked at what age they expect to retire, almost 4 in 10 surveyed workers in 2026 said age 70 or older—or that they would never retire. But surveyed retirees say they frequently end up retiring earlier than planned, often because of health problems or disability:
While many Americans today are entering later life in good financial shape, the prospects for large numbers of younger workers are more dire. A survey last fall by the Pew Research Center found that almost half (45%) of Americans under age 65 aren’t confident they’ll have sufficient assets to get through retirement—or say they won’t be able to retire at all.
Helping these workers build a secure future becomes even more challenging when the nature of work and retirement is likely to change in the coming decades.
“If you ask Generations Z and Alpha about their expectations for their careers, they absolutely expect to have multiple career chapters and transitions,”
says Liba Wenig Rubenstein, director of the Future of Work Initiative at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C.
“They’re interested in breaks for education and rest and caring for family members, as opposed to some sort of continuous, linear career path.”
Put another way: Workers will likely wish to “retire” at multiple points in their lives (and for varying amounts of time) before returning to work—and will need tools that can help fund these periodic breathers.
Here’s a closer look at some of the biggest challenges that retirees and would-be retirees are facing and how legislators and policymakers are coming to grips with them:
Universal access
It’s the single biggest problem in the nation’s retirement system: Almost half of private-sector employees ages 18 to 64, or about 57 million Americans, don’t participate in a retirement plan at work, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security, a Washington-based research organization. Yes, Social Security provides a financial foundation in retirement. But steady payroll deductions—month after month, year after year, starting as early as possible—are essential to building a nest egg.
Zohar Lazar for WSJ
In particular, many Americans now hitting mid-career have saved only a fraction of what they’ll need for retirement and have little time to catch up, says Dan Doonan, the institute’s executive director. Among workers within 10 years of turning 65, the median retirement savings is just $30,000.
Ideally, the U.S. would have “universal access” to retirement savings accounts, giving all workers the option of contributing automatically to a savings plan via payroll deductions. Absent a national program that does just that, individual states are taking the lead—and seeing progress.
In the past decade, 22 states have adopted retirement-savings programs, with 17 of them requiring employers to offer their own retirement plans or to enroll their workers in state-facilitated savings accounts. (The others are voluntary arrangements, and the particulars vary from state to state.) More than 1.2 million people are now enrolled in these state programs, with about $2.9 billion in assets, according to the Center for Retirement Initiatives.
“It just shows that when you make it easy for workers to save, especially those who tend to be more low and moderate income, they will save,” says Antonelli.
Washington and Congress haven’t been sitting on their hands entirely. The Secure Act and Secure 2.0 Act, enacted in 2019 and 2022, respectively, changed several features involving retirement plans, including making it easier for some employers to offer 401(k)s. The federal Saver’s Match program, starting in 2027, will pump dollars into selected savings plans. And new 530A accounts, known as Trump Accounts, will, in effect, allow Americans to begin building nest eggs at birth.
Perhaps most important, all the above shows that retirement overhaul “really does have bipartisan support,” says K.C. Boas, who leads the retirement initiative for the Aspen Institute’s Financial Security Program. “But these innovations are just the first step. Now we have to get them into the hands of everyone.”
Social Security’s future
If getting more Americans enrolled in savings plans is the biggest challenge on the retirement front, fixing Social Security runs a close second. At the moment, unless Congress acts, the program’s trust fund will be depleted in late 2032, at which point beneficiaries will see their monthly checks reduced about 22%. Without reserves from the trust fund, Social Security relies solely on payroll taxes to pay beneficiaries; those taxes aren’t sufficient to pay 100% of benefits.
Surveys show that the public is clearly aware of—and concerned about—the threat. But will Congress fix it? The last time Social Security was in dire straits, in 1983, Congress did, in fact, step in—but with just three months to spare. (President Reagan signed legislation in April 1983; benefits were scheduled to be cut that July.) A similar scenario seems likely today: A solution will emerge, but later rather than sooner.
“I’m certain we’re going to address [an overhaul] at some point,”
says David Blanchett, head of retirement research at Prudential Financial.
“And I think it’s incredibly unlikely that current and near-retirees will be affected.” But, as part of this, he adds, “it is possible that Social Security benefits in 20 years could be less generous than they are today. And that means people will have to save more for retirement.”
Health and healthcare costs
Older Americans in 2026 are grappling with numerous challenges to their health. Only about one-third (37%) rate their physical health as excellent or very good, according to the 2025 Pew survey. About 93% have at least one chronic condition and nearly 80% have two or more. Falls alone send three million adults age 65-plus to hospital emergency rooms each year. And 1 in 4 older adults suffer from behavioral health problems, including depression, anxiety or substance abuse.
It’s here, though, that the outlook is brighter for Americans retiring in the 2050s and beyond.
To start, artificial intelligence likely will give individuals a much more precise answer to the question that bedevils so much of retirement planning today: How long will I live?
“A 65-year-old today has a pretty decent chance of dying in the next five years but also has a pretty decent chance of living for at least 30 years,”
says Ben Harris, vice president and director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution and co-author of the book “The Retirement Challenge.”
“With its ability to personalize medicine, AI will give us a better understanding of the probability of each person living to a certain age, which can help them plan for their lifespan.”
And those spans are likely to increase more than we realize, Harris adds. Two and three decades from now, improved diagnostics and improved pharmaceuticals, also courtesy of AI, will help extend, he says, “our most precious commodity: years of life.”
Sue Peschin, president and chief executive officer of the Alliance for Aging Research in Washington, sees tomorrow’s retirees benefiting from several advances in medicine: a more-exact understanding of the risks and benefits involved in treating serious diseases; potential breakthroughs in curbing diabetes and obesity; improved programs to deal with substance-abuse disorders; and earlier detection of Alzheimer’s.
And Generation X and millennials, in particular, she notes, might have more advantages than they realize when it comes to living a long and healthy retirement.
“They’ve had different struggles than older generations—more with mental health and stress,” she says. “On the other hand, there’s much more awareness about nutrition and exercise. And that’s a big plus.”
Glenn Ruffenach is a former reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.
Thanks Glenn. Sorry about the length of this response.
In my 74th year, I’m still wonderfully lucky to have lived all my life in America – a gift from my immigrant mother and maternal grandmother who arrived in Ellis Island in July 1925, 101 years ago.
The difference in terms of retirement preparation in the States, is that every American worker, EVERY worker, has had access to a more than adequate, tax preferred retirement savings plan for the last 44 years – universal coverage in an Individual Retirement Account has been in effect since 1982.
For a median wage worker who was 21 years old in 1982, if he/she consistently saved the maximum and earned only an average return of 5%, those monies, combined with Social Security, will replace over 95% of a median wage worker’s pre-retirement income – well in excess of 100% for any worker at the 40th percentile or lower!
Glenn’s article is 100% accurate. However, to me it looks like he (and others) are comparing retirement in America today with retirement among the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation, for a small minority of Americans who retired during America’s “Golden Years” of retirement (1985 – 1994) – ignoring how America continues to evolve.
Keep in mind that, measured properly, only 2% or so of Americans over age 65 live in poverty – substantially less than Americans under age 65.,
And, no surprise among Americans that when the media depicts our challenges, media coverage in Europe suggests we are struggling. I ask you to look at the foreign World Cup fans in America. Our media are repleat with fun stories of how foreign visitors find America nice, interesting, innovative and welcoming – nothing like the country they thought they would encounter.
Glenn’s #1 mistake is assuming that today’s workers want what those who successfully retired in the past experienced during America’s golden years of retirement – a long ago 10 year period from 1985 – 1994) – resulting from the minority who had consistent employment with the same employer for 25+ years, leading to cessation of all employment, sometime prior to age 65.
In my last plan sponsor role (1985 – 2010), we identified that less than 5% of all workers we hired, regardless of age, would separate and immediately retire (commence benefits, not join another employer or even a competitor) after reaching age 62 and completing 25 or more years service.
Further, with exceptions for periods of disruption (technical or economic, such as the 1982 recession, the Great Recession (2008-2009), COVID (2020 – 2021) etc.), almost all turnover in America is VOLUNTARY. People seldom join employers with one eye firmly planted on retirement preparation as their top financial priority.
Median tenure of American workers has been less than 5 years for the past 7 decades. Median tenure of American workers age 50+ has consistently been less than 10 years for the past 5 decades. By age 50, American workers have had an average of 11 employers. That is, more than 2/3rds of full time workers reaching age 67 will have a different employer than the one they had at age 50!
See my five year old article in Benefits Quarterly: Practical Dreaming: What Are Your 401k Participants Dreaming About. That article recounts some of my plan sponsor experiences, previously documented in a nearly ten year old article for the Society of Actuaries: My Financial Wellness Solution: The 401k As A Lifetime Financial Instrument
https://www.soa.org/globalassets/assets/files/resources/essays-monographs/financial-wellness/2017-financial-wellness-essay-towarnicky.pdf
In America, while employers sponsor plans, those plans are separate legal entities – such that many workers have started to maintain 401k retirement savings plans after employment with the plan sponsor has ended.
Glenn’s writing is not new. Here are two ~20 year old attempts to decry the decline of defined benefit pension plans and retirement preparation in America – ignoring the implications of American workers’ personal preferences, see:
Teresa Ghilarducci – When I’m Sixty-Four: The Plot against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them
or
Jacob Hacker, The Great Risk Shift, The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care and Retirement And How Yo Can Fight Back
I can look at most every criticism in Glenn’s article and show why my adult children, ages 41 and 38, perceive those challenges to offer them opportunity:
“… The warning from educators, economists and think tanks is loud, clear and persistent: The nation’s retirement system is in need of repair. Failing to do so could mean that tens of millions of Americans in the 2050s and beyond will enter later life with little, if any, financial security. … ”
Those who make these statements often rely on data from the flawed CPS survey.
See: https://www.asppa-net.org/news/2025/4/the-real-retirement-crisis/
Despite typical turnover, both of my children are on track to become middle class millionaires before they reach Social Security eligibility.
“… The good news: People appear to be listening. “I’m excited about the progress we’re seeing,” says Angela Antonelli, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives at the McCourt School of Public Policy. … “They’re interested in breaks for education and rest and caring for family members, as opposed to some sort of continuous, linear career path.” Put another way: Workers will likely wish to “retire” at multiple points in their lives (and for varying amounts of time) before returning to work—and will need tools that can help fund these periodic breathers. …”
To me, that is an accurate description of American workers, and not just today and tomorrow, but yesterday as well. My children believe that flexibility in employment is a positive, not a negative.
“… Universal access. It’s the single biggest problem in the nation’s retirement system … Ideally, the U.S. would have “universal access” to retirement savings accounts, giving all workers the option of contributing automatically to a savings plan via payroll deductions. … Absent a national program that does just that, individual states are taking the lead—and seeing progress. … ”
It just isn’t so. And, it hasn’t been so since 1982. 95+% of Americans are paid electronically today. That means 95+% of American workers can split their net paycheck and open up a no fee Individual Retirement Account where more than one vendor offers index mutual funds with asset management fees of 0 – 5 basis points.
I opened my first IRA in 1982 with a deposit of $2,000 US.
What’s unique about what some of the state activity? Not much, except that 17 of them are mandating payroll deduction contributions to the very same IRA product I started using in 1982 – but on a Roth, or after tax basis.
In terms of recent legislation, some retirement professionals believe SECURE 2.0 may actually turn out to be a net negative – offering a plethora of new options to cash out, more pre-retirement leakage from retirement savings.
See: https://401kspecialistmag.com/is-congress-mad-are-you/
Yes, social security funding will have to be overhauled. However, it isn’t like anyone looking didn’t know it was coming. Over the past 35 years::
• November 5th, 1993: President Bill Clinton, by Executive Order #12878, created the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement Reform (the Danforth Commission) to evaluate entitlement programs – specifically Social Security and Medicare. Crickets.
• February 5, 2005: President George W. Bush made a reform recommendation to add personal accounts and change the COLA. Soundly rejected by Democrats.
• April 27, 2010: The bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (often called Simpson-Bowles) met to recommend fiscal reform, including recommendations to reform Social Security. More crickets.
• June 1, 2016: President Barack Obama, nearing the end of this second term, reminded us that Social Security’s finances needed strengthening – but never made a proposal.
Health and healthcare costs – the solution for funding those expenses has been in place since 2003 – arriving too late for many Baby Boomers, but more than plenty of time for Millennials, Alpha and Beta generations.
See: https://www.soa.org/globalassets/assets/library/newsletters/retirement-section-news/2020/august/rsn-2020-08-towarnicky.pdf
Again, no savings program works unless retirement preparation is a priority.
The trick with America’s 401k plans, IRAs, and Health Savings Accounts is to ensure your marketing confirms the value, the liquidity each offers “… along the way to and throughout retirement.” That is, done right, the 401k, IRA and HSA all provide sufficient liquidity such that they enable workers to contribute more than they would otherwise earmark for a distant, uncertain perhaps unlikely retirement.
Best to you, Jack