By George (Sandy) MacKenzie

Research Overview

Both preretired and already retired households have always faced, in varying degrees of severity, five basic risks. This essay will describe and analyze each of the five risks in a detail appropriate to the essay’s length, and will address the extent to which formal or informal insurance arrangements or institutions can address them adequately. But it will also address a new, and forbidding, risk that could affect each of the five longstanding risks: the risk or risks entailed by the economic and financial consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The essay’s presentation addresses each of these five risks, and ends with some tentative conclusions and recommendations for public policy, and for households and businesses.