Center for Retirement Research at Boston College

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Center for Retirement Research at Boston College

The goals of the Center for Retirement Research are to promote research on retirement issues, to transmit new findings to the policy community and the publ

08/27/2026

New on Squared Away: A personal finance blog: "Time-Tested Strategies for Reducing Debt"

💡 A financial planner's practical, no-magic-bullet framework for tackling credit cards, student loans, and mortgages – one step at a time.

🔗 https://bit.ly/4iuUeVV

08/26/2026

What We're Reading Now! Our latest hand-selected list of interesting reads:

1️⃣ In Sickness and in Health: Retirement Responses to Spousal Health Shocks (National Bureau of Economic Research)
2️⃣ What I Saw at the Social Security Hearing (LinkedIn Post by Jeff Brown)
3️⃣ An A.I. Tax Boom Could Curtail America’s Debt. But Not Solve It. (The New York Times)

Get the links and short descriptions: https://crr.bc.edu/WWRN

08/25/2026

New CRR Brief: “Does Giving Money to Your Parents Make You Less Financially Secure?"

➡️ Some retirees with insufficient savings rely on their adult children to help, which, in turn, could impact the children’s own retirement saving.
➡️ Perhaps not surprisingly, children who give aid to parents are typically better off financially than non-givers, likely because they can afford it.
➡️ However, Black and Hispanic individuals are an exception: those who support their parents have less retirement wealth and total wealth.
➡️ While they do not appear to save less, their saving could be skewed toward later in their careers, so they miss out on the full benefits of compounding returns.

🔗 https://bit.ly/4gsbSXL

08/11/2026

New CRR Brief: “Small Business Retirement Plans: A Primer"

⭐ Small firms are the primary source of the retirement plan coverage gap.
⭐ One barrier to plan adoption is financial uncertainty, but many small employers overestimate the cost and administrative burden of offering a plan.
⭐ The small firms that do have plans tend to be larger, more stable, and more likely to view them as a tool for recruitment and retention.
⭐ Advisors to small firms, such as accountants and payroll providers, could assist in boosting plan adoption, but they may need training to be most effective.
⭐ State auto-IRAs, PEPs, and fintech innovations may also help increase coverage, but firms still need clear information, trusted guidance, and simple processes.

🔗 https://bit.ly/3Spthsc
Big thanks to TIAA Institute for the support!

08/06/2026

"PACE: A Better Model for Elder Care?" – New on Squared Away: A personal finance blog

In this blog, Dr. Anthony Zizza discusses the PACE program, which provides comprehensive home care for low-income seniors who would otherwise need a nursing home.

🔗 https://bit.ly/45eDEBZ

08/04/2026

Our summer newsletter features new research on:

💡 married couples’ 401(k) saving
💡 the latest on Social Security’s finances
💡 the impact of AI on older workers

Check out these briefs and more! 🔗 https://crr.bc.edu/newsletter

07/29/2026

What We’re Reading Now – Our latest hand-selected list of interesting reads:

💡 Elderly Health and Longevity in the US: Evidence & Implications (National Bureau of Economic Research)
💡 New Homeownership Measure Puts People First (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis)
💡 The Retirement Tax Break That Most People Overlook (The Wall Street Journal)

🔗 https://crr.bc.edu/WWRN

07/28/2026

New CRR Brief: “Health Shocks and Annuity Choices"

*️⃣ As U.S. financial firms consider embedding annuities as the default in 401(k)s, it’s worth assessing the potential risks as well as the gains.
*️⃣ The analysis uses data from a major Swedish pension plan to see how a cancer diagnosis affects participants’ payout decisions when annuities are the default.
*️⃣ It finds that those diagnosed with cancer before retirement are less likely to annuitize than those diagnosed after, but the response is surprisingly small.
*️⃣ A supplemental lab experiment found that the small response is likely due to having an annuity as the default.
*️⃣ Thus, default annuitization should be weighed against the costs of guiding people toward choices that may not reflect changed circumstances.

🔗 https://bit.ly/4wkR6QC

07/23/2026

New on Squared Away: A personal finance blog: "A Mid-Year Money Checkup Can Help Fine-Tune Your Finances"

A summer-time tune-up on your retirement savings, beneficiaries, and tax planning could save you from a year-end scramble.

🔗 https://bit.ly/4fzlFuQ

07/15/2026

What We're Reading Now: Check our our latest hand-selected list of interesting reads:

📖 New Study Challenges Notion That Aging Means Decline, Finds Many Older Adults Improve Over Time (💡Yale School of Public Health)
📖 The Heatwave Shows That Your Next Retirement Risk Isn’t Your Portfolio (💡Forbes)
📖 Elder Fraud Is Surging. Here Are Three Simple Steps to Combat It. (💡Washington Post)

🔗 https://crr.bc.edu/WWRN

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