While much attention has been focused recently on the well-being of Social Security, the revolution in the private pension system in the United States during the past three decades has remained relatively under the radar. Beginning in the 1980s, many employers in the United States switched the type of pension plans they offer their workers from defined benefit (DB) plans to defined contribution (DC) plans. This freed them from having to set aside funds to pay guaranteed lifetime benefits to retirees. It also shifted the investment risk to workers, making them responsible for contributing to and managing their retirement funds through 401(k) accounts. Edward N. Wolff calls this the Great Transformation, and for good reason. From 1983 to 2007, the share of families with DC plans rose from 12 percent to 64 percent, while the share with DB plans fell from 69 percent to 39 percent. This change has not only thoroughly altered how millions of Americans fund their retirement, it has also, as Wolff shows, generated growing income inequality and insecurity among retirees while escalating the importance of Social Security as a source of retirement income. Increasingly, when it comes to retirement wealth, those with DB plans are the haves while those with DC plans are the have-nots, particularly in times characterized by economic recession or stagnation. Wolff seeks to address six basic questions: 1. With the Great Transformation, did pension coverage expand or contract over time? 2. Did the value of pension wealth increase or decline? 3. Did overall wealth inequality rise or fall? 4. Did the retirement prospects of middle-aged Americans improve or worsen? 5. How did the Great Transformation affect different demographic groups? 6. How did these effects vary between the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s? Through exhaustive analysis, Wolff identifies the weaknesses in the current private pension system and offers practical, policy-based solutions aimed at strengthening the system, thereby making retirement a less daunting prospect for workers relying on 401(k) plans as a key source of retirement income and wealth. He also recognizes the importance of Social Security to these workers and suggests ways of strengthening it as well.

This book documents the growth of unproductive activity in the United States economy since World War II and its relation to the economic surplus, capital accumulation, and economic growth. Unproductive activities broadly consist of those involved in the circulation process, including wholesaling and retailing, banking and financial services, advertising, legal services, business services and many (though not all) government activities. The results indicate that the level of unproductive activity in the postwar economy has been a significant factor in the slowdown in the rate of capital accumulation, productivity growth and the overall growth rate. Here, the villain is shown to be the gradual but persistent shift of resources to unproductive activities. The consequence has been a reduction in new capital formation and productivity growth and an erosion in the rate of growth in per capita living standards. Moreover, the rise in unproductive activity is itself seen to be rooted in the logic of advanced capitalism. The forces of competition, which in the early stages of capitalism lead to rapid technical change and productivity growth, promote non-productive and even counterproductive activities in its more advanced stages.

Product Description: Throughout the 1990s the US expanded its lead over other advanced industrial nations in terms of conventionally measured per capita income. However, it is not clear that welfare levels in America have grown concomitantly with per capita income, or that Americans are necessarily better off than citizens of other advanced countries...read more

Product Description: Book by Wolff, Edward N.

Product Description: A work that sparked widespread controversy when it was first published, Top Heavy is acclaimed economist Edward N. Wolff’s eloquent presentation of the facts of wealth inequality in the United States. In a completely revised and updated edition of the book the Boston Review hailed as “the leading contemporary study of the distribution of wealth,” Wolff reveals the unprecedented rise in recent years of wealth inequality and shows how it is one of the major forces challenging democracy and economic opportunity in America...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: This text serves as a self-contained course on income distribution and poverty, with additional emphasis on issues of discrimination. Sections of the book revisit microeconomics and basic statistics. Also includes considerable detail on the role of labor markets as a source of income differences among individuals...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Book by Wolff, Edward N.

Product Description: This comprehensive study is a collection of original articles that view the current state of knowledge of the convergence hypothesis. The hypothesis asserts that at least since the Second World War, and perhaps for a considerable period before that, the group of industrial countries was growing increasingly homogeneous in terms of levels of productivity, technology and per capita incomes...read more

Product Description: The 1980s witnessed an unprecedented rise in inequality and poverty in the USA, despite a sustained expansion, which raises concerns about the appropriate policy actions needed to offset it. The papers collected in this volume explore the differing aspects of this problem such as the shrinkage of the middle class, the growing intergenerational wealth gap, the widening of the earnings gap between the college-educated and the high-school graduate, and the increasing dispersion of the distribution of family income, despite the increased labor force participation of women...read more

Product Description: David Dollar and Edward Wolff look at claims that a deindustrialized United States is on the road to secondrate status in the global marketplace and find them to be both unfounded and simplistic. Their systematic and empirical investigation of the mechanisms through which countries like Japan and Germany have caught up with the United States in terms of productivity and standard of living will inform public debate about which government policies are likely to improve a nation's competitiveness...read more

Product Description: Looking at six major countries--the United States, Great Britain, Canada, France, Sweden, and West Germany--this volume presents the most recent research on inequality in household wealth. Among the findings reported are the gradual but steady decline in the degree of wealth inequality among households during this century, the persistently high concentration of wealth today in a small percentage of households, and the effects that retirement systems have had in equalizing wealth holdings...read more