Facing the Age Wave

In Facing the Age Wave, four experts explain the most significant areas of concern created by the aging of the American population and offer possible solutions.

David Wise analyzes the declining participation in the labor force by older Americans and the role played in encouraging this phenomenon by Social Security and the early retirement plans funded by employees. Douglas Bernheim measures the inadequacy of personal saving for retirement and proposes methods to encourage saving for the critical senior years. John Shoven and David Wise describe the taxing of pensions as a disincentive to the most important form of saving in this country. David Cutler presents principles that are key to averting the crisis of looming health care costs.

Facing the Age Wave is the product of a symposium of distinguished scholars on the subject of aging in America. The symposium was held in the spring of 1997 under the auspices of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

David A. Wise is the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the John F. Stambaugh Professor of Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, where he has taught since 1973. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is the area director for the Economics of Aging and the Health Economics Programs.