Reinventing Retirement
Teresa Ghilarducci on Immigrants, Retirement Savings, and the Way Forward
Teresa Ghilarducci, renowned labor economist with the New School for Social Research, discusses immigrants, retirement savings, and the way forward.
An early critic of 401(k)’s for being voluntary, risky and regressive, a view that makes sense in post-crash America but got her labeled “the most dangerous woman in America,” Ghilarducci is the author of When I’m Sixty Four: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them (Princeton University Press, 2008). For more information, including her new Rockefeller Foundation project, “Beyond the 401(k): Guaranteeing Retirement Security,” click here.
Professor Ghilarducci will be presenting findings from a recently published paper, “Understanding and Increasing Mexican Immigrants’ Financial and Retirement Security” (The Gerontologist, July 2011). She and her colleagues find that Mexican immigrants’ collectivism and transnationalism contribute to them having the lowest level of retirement savings of any major demographic group. Limiting withdrawals and formalizing the tanda — an unofficial community credit system — would help immigrants accumulate more retirement assets. A seemingly innocuous (yet important) finding, this research and Ghilarducci’s other work suggest deep flaws in our nation’s retirement systems... as well as the way forward.
The event is organized by the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration and co-sponsored by AARP, the USC Edward R. Royal Institute on Aging, the USC Tomas Rivera Policy Institute and the USC Davis School of Gerontology.