What You Need To Know About the Economics of Growing Old (But Were Afraid to Ask): A Provocative Reference Guide to the Economics of Aging

by Teresa Ghilarducci (Editor)

With the aid of her Economics of Aging class, Teresa Ghilarducci has compiled this comprehensive sourcebook as a guide for politicians, economists, journalists, students, and ordinary Americans through the maze of Social Security and the economics of growing old in America. What You Need to Know About the Economics of Growing Old (But Were Afraid to Ask) is divided into five sections. The first section addresses the status of the elderly and explores such issues as the average life expectancy and the number of elderly living in poverty. The second deals with the structure of the Social Security system and its disbursements of benefits. The third traces the economic path to old age. The fourth considers changing social norms, including the increase in the number of women in the workforce. The final section looks at what happens when the elderly work for pay. This book will be valuable from the classroom to the halls of Congress. Simply put, it contains information everyone should know.

152 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2004

About the author

Teresa Ghilarducci is an economist, author, and labor economist, and retirement security expert. Her widely circulated New York Times op-ed "Our Ridiculous Approach to Retirement" brought attention to her fresh and comprehensive critique of the America way of provisioning for retirement. Her book, When I'm 64: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them, presents her cutting-edge policy recommendations for restructuring the United States’ deteriorating retirement income security system. Her book Labor’s Capital: The Economics and Politics of Employer Pensions won an Association of American Publishers award in 1992. For the past five years, she has served as a court appointed trustee of the $50 billion retiree health care fund for ford, GM, and Chrysler retirees. Before coming The New School she was a professor at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Ghilarducci was the 2006–08 Wurf Fellow at Harvard Law School; her research has been funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, U.S. Department of Labor, Ford Foundation, and Retirement Research Foundation.

Reviews

[Carol Blakeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was interesting information, but it was written by 19 year olds, and it shows.