We confirm previous findings that as the pension plan size increases, administrative costs per participant and asset fall after controlling for the proportion of retirees in a plan. However, we question the inference that the high costs of administrating small plans partly explains why small...

The American workforce and the role of employee benefits have changed dramatically since the 1980s when economists seriously considered dual labour market models to describe pay and employment patterns. Then, dual labour market models described men's labour markets, but not women's and the tests...

Why are pension funds so large and benefits so small? This examination of the 120-year-old American system of privatized social insurance--often called, at 1.7 trillion dollars, the biggest lump of money in the world--reveals that the system fails to provide adequate retirement income security,...

Through their pension funds, workers own, but do not control, most of the finance capital in the United States. Since 1978 the U.S. labor movement's defensive and offensive pension strategies have bolstered union bargaining power and provided funds to profitable and union-only construction...

This study updates what we know about the Great Recession’s impact on older unemployed Americans’ health and pre-retirement life by focusing on their wealth and income sources, health insurance access, poverty rates, unemployment duration, labor force drop-out rates, and Social Security...