“If you make it to age 60 to 65, you can still expect to live a pretty long time,” said Nari Rhee, director of the Retirement Security Program at UC Berkeley Labor Center. “And I would say it’s a particular issue for women, because women can expect to live longer, but they’ve had lower earnings, they’ve had patchier careers because of caregiving, both for children and often for elders.”

Public pensions support race and gender equity in Marin County, according to a new study from the University of California at Berkeley.

Retirement is the final chapter of the American dream. But that dream of the “golden years” is quickly turning into a fairy tale for a growing number of people. More than a third of Americans today feel unprepared or unsure if they are on track for retirement, according to a new study. But, on the other hand, some experts say American seniors are better off than their counterparts in other countries. Is America really facing a retirement crisis, and if so can it be solved?

“If you’re retired and on a fixed income, inflation really, really hurts,” said Rhee. “We’ve come out of decades of historically low-interest inflation to all of a sudden pretty substantial inflation, especially in things that matter to people, which is food and fuel.”

“Social Security is a bedrock,” Nari Rhee, director of UC Berkeley Labor Center’s Retirement Security Program, testified at a federal hearing last year. But “the current average benefit of $1,500 a month is insufficient to cover basic needs for most retirees, given the cost of living.”

Rhee says workers are much more likely to save for retirement if there is a payroll deduction program at work.

“Our research shows that pension costs for public employees in Marin County are either declining or near their peak, and that public employers can anticipate lower rates in the near future,” said Nari Rhee, director of the retirement security program at the center.

One hurdle CalSavers faces, Rhee said, is making small employers aware of the June 30 deadline. They need to be told what their obligations are, she said, but they’re the hardest group to reach.

For decades, “we underfunded public services in California,” Rhee tells me. “It comes down to these very individual cases, but I think it ties into this larger issue of how we recruit, retain and compensate public employees.”

“I do think that we are starting to see a crisis,” said Nari Rhee, director of the Retirement Security Program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education, “in terms of seniors not being able to stay in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area.”