Financial advisors commonly use earnings replacement rates to assist workers in their retirement planning. Policymakers and analysts use them to gauge the adequacy of Social Security benefits and other retirement income in allowing retirees to maintain preretirement living standards. In recent...

Several recent assessments suggest that the majority of U.S. workers are at risk of having inadequate resources to maintain their work-life standards of living in retirement. These assessments are often based on models that fail to reflect patterns of income, consumption and savings that vary...