Description: Diverse Risks 2016 Call for Essays

Description: Successful healthcare reform: First, it must help that must keep healthy people healthy. Second, it must help people mitigate or eliminate the health-risks associated with unhealthy lifestyle behavior choices, and Third, it must ensure the provision of evidence-based care to those who are ill.

Description: This paper examines disincentives for long careers created by Social Security. The paper then discusses the subsequent stress on public and private pension systems caused by increasingly long retirements.

Description: The article is a tribute to the life of Bob Myers, actuary and life-long contributor to OASDI.

Description: In this article the author chides the authors of the 'SUMMARY OF THE 2010 ANNUAL REPORTS SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE BOARDS OF TRUSTEES' for presenting biased 'misinformation and disinformation in their Message to the Public, and for their contribution to public ignorance about Social Security and Medicare financing.' He attributes this to the fact that the Boards are devoid of public trustees, and consist solely of partisan political appointees.

Description: This article consists of a point-counterpoint dialogue addressing important aspects of social insurance programs. It discusses the desirability and advantages of these programs that provide financial assistance to those who are retired, disabled, ill or unemployed.

Description: In Canada, there are three main sources of government-provided retirement income: 1. The Canada/Quebec Pension Plan [C/QPP], which have benefits and contributions based on earnings up to the Yearly Maximum Pensionable Earnings, 2. Old Age Security [OAS], which is a fixed amount for most but does include a 'clawback' of benefits for high-income individuals, and 3. The Guaranteed Income Supplement [GIS], which is designed to supplement those with extremely low income. The annual GIS benefit is reduced, or clawed back, by 50 cents for every dollar of annual income the person has in retirement, including C/QPP and income from Registered Retirement Savings Plans [RRSP] and other savings. OAS benefits are not included in determining the GIS clawback. The result of this is that low-income individuals who attempt to enhance their retirement replacement ratio actually see a decrease in government-provided support the more they save for retirement. In fact, savings in an RRSP can effectively be taxed at more than 100% through corresponding reductions in the GIS, social housing, home care, GAINS [Ontario's Guaranteed Annual Income Supplement], and other benefits which are based on one's personal retirement income. This paper explores a basic GIS exemption, a GIS clawback rate of lower than 50%, and various combinations of the two as alternative policies for the GIS. The goal is to improve the fairness of the GIS and reduce the disincentive to save for retirement, without increasing the overall cost of the program significantly.

Description: Feature article about the different types of retirement systems throughout the world and how watching what they do could help the U.S. retirement system.

Description: HI Trust Fund: Actuarial Methodology and Principal Assumptions from Pension Section News, October 1999, Issue No. 41.

Description: OASDI Trust Fund: Principal Economic and Demographic Assumptions from Pension Section News, October 2000, Issue No. 44.