Nari Rhee, Ph.D., is director of the Retirement Security Program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. Her current research focuses on the retirement crisis facing California and the U.S. in the context of declining pension coverage, and policies to improve the retirement income prospects of low- and middle-wage workers. Before returning to the Labor Center in November 2014, she served for two years as manager of research at the National Institute on Retirement Security. She formerly held appointments as a postdoctoral scholar, visiting scholar, and associate academic specialist at the Labor Center. Dr. Rhee has written on a wide range of issues related to pensions and retirement security, including public pension reform, international pension systems, and retirement plan design. Her analysis of the retirement savings crisis and its racial dimensions has received broad media coverage and informed policy debates at the state and national levels.
Dr. Rhee’s previous work engaged a range of issues related to the economic security of low-wage workers, including care work, income inequality, housing affordability, uneven regional development, and labor-community coalition building. She earned a Ph.D. in geography from UC Berkeley in 2007, a master’s degree in urban planning from UCLA in 1998, and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from UC Santa Cruz in 1996.
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This report finds that public pensions play an outsized role in the retirement security of every major demographic group in California, with the strongest impact on women and people of color. It is also a powerful tool for reducing wealth inequality. As private pension coverage declines, public pensions remain a critical bulwark of middle-class retirement security alongside Social Security, particularly for marginalized communities who have been historically shut out of other wealth-building opportunities.
This study analyzes the impact of defined benefit pensions, especially public pensions, on retirement income security and wealth distribution by race, gender, and educational attainment in the U.S. It serves as a companion report to Closing the Gap fact sheets, which are designed to inform the public about the social equity impact of pensions in each state and the District of Columbia.
This brief analyzes the impact of public sector employment and defined-benefit pensions on race and gender equity in retirement income security in Marin County and California. Public pensions play an outsized role in the retirement security of every racial group, particularly in Black and Latino communities, and pension income provides a critical buffer against economic hardship in old age for all groups, especially women, Black and Latino Californians, and seniors without college degrees.
This brief examines pension benefits for public servants in Sonoma County in terms of their role in employee compensation, the evolving financial status of pension systems, the impact of pension reform on costs, and how different pension systems in the county and surrounding Bay Area region stack up against each other in terms of protection from inflation during retirement.
“For families on the edge, when you’re just really living on a tight margin and then you get hit with a surprise fee, things can wind up cascading really, really quickly,” Nari Rhee said. “Putting a stop to that with access to these accounts I think can make a real difference.”
Why did fewer people retire last year? One likely explanation is people who would’ve retired in 2023 instead took early retirement during the height of the pandemic, said Nari Rhee.
Retirement in the U.S. is a patchwork system with “a really big gaping hole” for self-employed people such as Kropp, who never worked for a large employer that offered 401(k) matching contributions, said Nari Rhee.
Nari Rhee is featured on “Ask the Expert” on selecting a place to retire.
In this conversation, which focuses on labor and retirement issues, Dr. Rhee emphasizes the challenges faced by low and middle-income workers in the U.S. retirement system, particularly in the private sector. The discussion touches on topics such as the inadequacy of Social Security for low-wage workers, barriers in defined contribution plans, and the impact of job characteristics on retirement benefits.
Pensions, in general, reduce poverty, and importantly, the anti-poverty impact of pensions is greatest for Black and Latino retirees, as well as for retirees without a college degree, says the National Institute on Retirement Security.
The government uses tax breaks to encourage saving, with bigger deductions for bigger contributions (up to caps set by the IRS). That steers the biggest benefit to higher earners who can most afford to save, Rhee says. “We need to restructure the subsidies so that more of the tax benefits go towards low-income households that actually need the help.”
“Black workers are concentrated in lower-wage jobs, often in the service sector, often with high turnover, where employers just don’t offer the benefits. Or maybe [workers] never get to stick around long enough to be able to qualify for benefits, including participating in a retirement plan,” says Nari Rhee.
Now a new report from the National Institute on Retirement Security and the UC Berkeley Labor Center lends support to the Federal Reserve’s assertions. It looks at the impacts of public sector defined-benefit pensions on race, gender and educational attainment.
In Barbieland, where everything is perfect for women, retirement security isn’t even an issue. In the real world, women face significant barriers to building retirement assets.
