The academic, industry, and journalistic library on American retirement policy is immense, as you’ll see from the full Bibliography that follows. But for those who simply want to gain key insights into the themes that have shaped From Here to Security, the following books have made a particularly powerful impact with insights into retirement finance.
Automatic: Changing the Way America Saves, by William G. Gale, J. Mark Iwry, David C. John, and Lina Walker. Lays out a valuable template for Auto-IRAs—accounts that may be a critical element in resolving the coverage gap.
Falling Short: The Coming Retirement Crisis and What to Do About It, by Alicia H. Munnell, Charles D. Ellis, and Andrew D. Eschtruth. A concise and comprehensive overview of America’s retirement coverage gap.
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. Introduced the world to behavioral economics and presents valuable behavioral alternatives to punitive regulation and expensive enforcement.
The Ownership Society: How the Defined Contribution Paradigm Changed America, by Edward A. Zelinsky. Solid overview of the defined contribution savings system and how it changed American retirement finance.
The People’s Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan, by Eric Laursen. A monumental contemporary history of Social Security—America’s universal defined benefit pension plan.
Save More Tomorrow: Practical Behavioral Finance Solutions to Improve 401(k) Plans, by Shlomo Benartzi. Articulates the valuable impact of escalation into automatic retirement savings plan enrollment.
U.S. Pension Reform: Lessons from Other Countries, by Martin Neil Baily and Jacob Funk Kirkegaard. Offers valuable comparative analysis between U.S. and overseas retirement finance systems and makes clear that the U.S. combination of Social Security and private pension savings is unique.