Labour market inequalities are well-known to be the main drivers of the gender pension gap. This publication focuses on helping governments find solutions for retirement savings arrangements that do not further exacerbate these inequalities.

The Committee on National Statistics and the Committee on Population, at the request of the NIA, convened a workshop in March 1996 to discuss data on the aging population that address the emerging and important social, economic, and health conditions of the older population. The purposes of the workshop were to identify how the population at older ages in the next few decades will differ from the older population today, to understand the underlying causes of those changes, to anticipate future problems and policy issues, and to suggest future needs for data for research in these areas. The scope of the workshop was broader than that of the 1988 CNSTAT report, including not only data on health and long-term care, but also actuarial, economic, demographic, housing, and epidemiological data needs for informing public policy.

The retirement income security of older Americans and the cost of providing that security are increasingly the subject of major debate. This volume assesses what we know and recommends what we need to know to estimate the short- and long-term effects of policy alternatives. It details gaps in data and research and evaluates possible models to estimate the impact of policy changes that could affect retirement income from Social Security, pensions, personal savings, and other sources.

This book reviews the uses and abuses of microsimulation modelsâ€"large, complex models that produce estimates of the effects on program costs and who would gain and who would lose from proposed changes in government policies ranging from health care to welfare to taxes. Volume 1 is designed to guide future investment in modeling and analysis capability on the part of government agencies that produce policy estimates. It will inform congressional and executive decision makers about the strengths and weaknesses of models and estimates and will interest social scientists in the potential of microsimulation techniques for basic and applied research as well as policy uses. The book concludes that a "second revolution" is needed to improve the quality of microsimulation and other policy analysis models and the estimates they produce, with a special emphasis on systematic validation of models and communication of validation results to decision makers.