Grant’s Best Practices: Resources Galore!
Keeping up with industry trends and new ideas is important, but often takes a back seat to urgent day-to-day concerns. If you’re like me, you probably find it difficult to carve sufficient time out your busy schedule to find and read articles and reports to help you keep current.
To make things easier for our readers, Massena Associates has pulled together a small collection of reports and articles from the past year that are particularly relevant to state-facilitated retirement savings programs and useful in terms of informing design decisions and advocacy efforts. The topic this week is the state of state retirement initiatives and programs in 2020.
The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College released a research brief titled Auto-IRA Rollout Gradually Speeding Up with a focus on OregonSaves and the time it takes to go from employer registration to the processing of payroll deductions. The Center’s website also maintains a page called Closing the Coverage Gap with data on access to workplace retirement plans and updates on federal and state initiatives to close the coverage gap.
The Pew Charitable Trusts published a pair of articles in 2020 exploring the relationship between the pandemic and state-facilitated retirement savings programs. In State Efforts Could Help Alleviate Effects of Volatility in Economy Roiled by Coronavirus the authors suggest, “state efforts to expand [retirement savings] programs…may be helping participants alleviate some of the volatility they face in both broader financial markets and their personal incomes.” Another Pew article, Oregon State Retirement Program Growing During Pandemic – Despite Some Worker Withdrawals, reported a March 2020 increase in OregonSaves withdrawals compared to 2019 and the first two months of 2020.
The Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives, an independent think tank within the McCourt School of Public Policy, is a comprehensive resource for updates on state retirement initiatives, retirement security research and industry trends. CRI’s 2019 report, Achieving Economies of Scale in State-Facilitated Retirement Savings Programs: The Case for Multi-State Collaboration, is worth a read for anyone working on developing retirement-related state proposals.
In addition to those already mentioned, three additional resources are worth checking out. AARP’s State Retirement Resource Center is a resource for data, information and public opinion research related to state retirement legislation and state retirement initiatives and programs. The National Institute on Retirement Security is a non-profit research and education organization that produces independent research aimed at informing policymaking “by fostering a deep understanding of the value of retirement security to employees, employers, and the economy as a whole.” Finally, the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education (Labor Center) conducts research and education on issues related to labor and employment. Over the past decade the Labor Center has contributed significant research related to retirement security and state retirement initiatives.
In the coming weeks we’ll share research and reports on topics such as retirement (in)security in the U.S., gender and racial/ethnic disparity in retirement wealth, and defined contribution trends and innovations.
Stay tuned and Happy Holidays! / Grant
This piece was featured in the December 17, 2020 edition of Retirement Security Matters. For more fresh thinking on retirement savings innovation, check out the newsletter here.
