The retirement security of American families has crumbled in the past generation. Workers retiring in the next 20 years can expect to receive only 65 percent during retirement of what they made during their working years, a drop of 16 percent from their parents.

Foreboding economic forecasts for flat wages, high unemployment, and rising costs of big-ticket necessities such as education and medical care suggest that young workers today could be on even shakier ground. Only 59 percent of full time workers have access to retirement plans at work, leaving a large part of the workforce to rely solely on Social Security benefits that are inadequate for a comfortable retirement and are under further attack by political opponents.

Much of the decline in retirement security is due to the shift in the private sector from providing retirement benefits through traditional pensions, which guaranteed a lifetime stream of income at retirement, to less secure individual retirement accounts, whose benefits vary with the size of employer and employee contributions, and the volatile swings of the stock market.

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THE FAILURE OF THE 401(K)