Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Did Retirees Save Enough To Compensate For The Increase In Individual Risk Exposure?, Christian E. Weller

Christian Weller

The United States experienced an unprecedented financial crisis after 2007. This paper analyzes if retirees had enough wealth built up to weather the financial risks that materialized in the crisis. Financial risks associated with saving for retirement had increasingly shifted onto individuals away from the public and employers during the decades before the crisis. This growing personal responsibility should have gone along with more saving and less risk taking. I use data from the Federal Reserve’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finances to first define an income threshold for retirees, specifically whether annuity income is greater than twice the poverty line …