Labor Department Releases Final Report of the National Summit on Retirement SavingsWashington, DC, September 21, 1998 - Labor Secretary Alexis Herman recently submitted to the White House and the Congress the final report [Ed. Note: links to a 524k .pdf file] on the 1998 National Summit on Retirement Savings, which was held this past June. The report compiles the retirement savings ideas generated by more than two hundred delegates representing the business community (including the investment company industry), the executive and legislative branches of government, labor organizations, and the general public. The report sets forth the current state of retirement savings and education in the U.S. and highlights several successful retirement savings education programs as models for enhancing employee and general public awareness regarding the importance of retirement savings and the availability of savings opportunities. The report concludes with a discussion of retirement savings barriers and opportunities. Summit delegates were charged with developing ideas for raising Americans' awareness of retirement savings matters, and were not expected to reach a consensus on the ideas generated. Consequently, the report does not attempt to identify any consensus on approaches to enhance retirement savings activity, and the appendix lists virtually all the ideas from the Summit. Nonetheless, certain prominent themes emerged from the Summit, including the need for: - increasing retirement savings education efforts through individual and cooperative efforts between federal, state and local governments, and the private sector;
- instilling in individuals a commitment to personal savings; and
- combining simplicity and coherence in government pension policy with appropriate incentives to encourage plan sponsorship.
The 1998 Summit was the first of three mandated by statute. Future Summits in 2001 and 2005 will measure progress in increasing retirement savings and serve to generate additional ideas.
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