Pension Publications

The Pension Rights Center is fortunate to be guided by a Board of Directors that includes a number of the nation's foremost experts on retirement income policy. Center Board members frequently publish important articles and books on pensions and Social Security issues. Below are some of their publications.

Read our listing of publications by other authors.

Board member Alicia Munnell has co-authored Working Longer: The Solution to the Retirement Income Challenge, which proposes that the most effective response to the retirement income challenge lies in remaining in the workforce longer. The book investigates the prospects for moving the average retirement age from 63, the current figure, to 66.

Board Chair Nancy Altman authored Protecting Social Security's Beneficiaries: Achieving Balance Without Benefit Cuts for the Economic Policy Institute's Agenda for Shared Prosperity. This briefing paper offers three proposals that retain Social Security’s distinctive character, increase its progressivity, maintain benefit levels, have no effect on 94% of workers, and increase the cost of the highest paid six percent of workers only modestly.

Board member Alicia Munnell has co-authored The Social Security Fix-It Book for the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. The book is a short, colorful guide to Social Security, its financing issues, and proposals for eliminating its shortfall.

Board Chair Nancy Altman’s book, The Battle for Social Security: From FDR’s Vision to Bush’s Gamble, was described by the Washington Post as "a fine history of America's most important government program...that tells the story wonderfully...and moves briskly along the interesting story line."

Board Vice Chair Daniel Halperin wrote "Fun and Games with the Roth IRA" for Tax Notes in July 2006. (PDF, copyright 2006 Tax Analysts. Reprinted with permission.). He also wrote "Employer-Based Retirement Income: The Ideal, the Possible and the Reality," an excellent overview of pension policy issues and recommendations, which appeared in the Elder Law Journal 37 in 2003 (abstract available, subscription required for full article).

Emeritus Board member Robert M. Ball wrote Meeting Social Security’s Long-Range Shortfall, an issue brief for the Century Foundation that updates his earlier publication, Fixing Social Security. Both are recommended reading for anyone concerned with the future of the Social Security system.

Also highly recommended is a biography of Bob Ball, who served as Social Security Commissioner from 1962-1973 and is widely regarded as "Mr. Social Security" for his successes over the years in preserving and strengthening the system. Robert M. Ball and the Politics of Social Security, by Edward D. Berkowitz, University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.

Another recommended book, co-written by PRC Board member Alicia Munnell, argues that the pension system must change if 401(k) plans are to provide workers with the security they need. Munnell is the director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Coming Up Short: The Challenges of 401(k) Plans, by Alicia Munnell and Annika Sunden, 2004.