Retiree “Replacement Rates” Are Tricky Things (A Bit Wonkish, Sorry)


A couple of days ago I wrote about Social Security MINT projections, which suggest that retiree income will continue on a fairly steady upward path for the next few decades. “It suggests that we don’t really face a historic retirement crisis,” I said.

Dean Baker has a response up today, which I’ll respond to in more detail later. I agree in part and dissent in part with what he says. For now, though, I just want to do two things. First, call attention to his post so you can go read his objections. Second, I want to make a point about “replacement rates” that’s subtle enough (and lengthy enough) to require a post of its own.

As both Baker and I point out, the MINT projection suggests that future retirees will be better off than current retirees in absolute dollar terms (adjusted for inflation, of course), but will have lower income replacement rates. In particular, MINT projects that past retirees, on average, received 95 percent of their working-age income. Future retirees will receive only 84 percent. What’s going on?

Part of the answer has to do with stagnant wages. In the past, wage growth was strong, so workers could expect to see their incomes grow strongly throughout their lifetimes (again, adjusted for inflation). More recently, wage growth has been weak. Incomes still rise over a worker’s lifetime, but not as much.

So take a look at the stylized chart on the right. Our first worker started out earning $50,000 and ended up at $100,000. (Yes, those are big numbers. I’m using them to make the math come out nice.) Her average lifetime income is $75,000.

Our second worker started out earning $75,000 and ended up at the same $100,000. Her average income is $85,000.

They both retired making $100,000. And suppose their retirement incomes are also identical at $71,000. What does that mean? Replacement rates are calculated as a percentage of average lifetime income, so worker #1 is receiving a 95 percent replacement. Worker #2 is receiving an 84 percent replacement.

It seems like our second worker has gotten the shaft. But did she? Both workers ended their careers making the same amount of money, and both are receiving the same retirement income. The difference in replacement rates is more a statistical artifact than a meaningful number.

Now, you can draw different conclusions from all this. It’s just raw data. But I want to make the point that replacement rates can be tricky things. In many cases, I think they tell us less about retirement income per se, and more about the fact that working-age incomes have suffered from sluggish growth over the past four decades. My underlying concern in this conversation has always been to wrest liberal attention away from retirees, who I think are doing relatively well, and keep it focused like a laser on rising income inequality and sluggish wage growth among middle-class workers.

In a sense, this is more a matter of emphasis than real dispute, since I doubt that Baker seriously disagrees here. But I do think the emphasis is important. It’s a thriving and vibrant middle class—and by this I mean the working-age middle class—that’s truly critical to a healthy modern democracy. If we get that, everything else will follow. I’ll have more to say about this later.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate