Cloth $49.00 ISBN: 9780226497099 Published March 2009
E-book $7.00 to $39.00 About E-books ISBN: 9780226497105 Published October 2009

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Overcoming the Saving Slump

How to Increase the Effectiveness of Financial Education and Saving Programs

Edited by Annamaria Lusardi

Overcoming the Saving Slump
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Edited by Annamaria Lusardi

406 pages | 1 halftone, 43 line drawings, 46 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2009
Cloth $49.00 ISBN: 9780226497099 Published March 2009
E-book $7.00 to $39.00 About E-books ISBN: 9780226497105 Published October 2009
The great majority of working Americans are unprepared to face the difficult task of planning for retirement. In fact, the personal savings rate has been holding steady at zero for several years, down from 8 percent in the mid-1980s. Overcoming the Saving Slump explores the many challenges facing workers in the transition from a traditional defined benefit pension system to one that requires more individual responsibility, analyzing the considerable impediments to saving and evaluating financial literacy programs devised by employers and the government.
 
Mapping the changing landscape of pensions and the rise of defined contribution plans, Annamaria Lusardi and others investigate new methods for stimulating saving and promoting financial education drawing on the experience of the United States as well as countries that have privatized their welfare systems, including Sweden and Chile.  This timely volume pinpoints where human resources departments, the financial industry, and government officials have succeeded—or failed—in bridging the way to a new retirement system. As the workforce ages and more pensions disappear each second, Lusardi’s findings will be invaluable for economists and anyone facing retirement.
 
Gary Engelhardt, Syracuse University
“Financial literacy is increasingly important in a world where individuals from all economic strata, rather than institutions, are being given a significantly greater role in financial decision making over the life course. Lusardi’s approach is balanced, innovative, and insightful, drawing perspectives from law, economics, marketing, and sociology, as well as American and international experiences in these domains. This book is well written and will be of interest to a wide variety of readers.”
Peter Tufano, Harvard Business School

“Rather than simply reporting on the savings slump, Lusardi assembles a remarkable collection of researchers focused on halting this slide. Rather than limiting their attention to a single solution, they explore a wide range of prescriptions from social marketing and financial education, to product design, policy changes, and process innovations. Lusardi and her collaborators exemplify how careful scholarship can inform an important challenge facing our society.”

Arie Kapteyn, Director, RAND Labor and Population

“This book tells you everything you want to know about financial education and how it can be used to improve financial decisions. It draws on different scientific disciplines, uses evidence from many countries, and discusses the main findings and puzzles in the literature. Indispensable for anyone who is interested in better financial decision making.”

For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu
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