Confero Fall 2014: Issue 8 | Page 21

AGING AND AMERICA AGING AND AMERICA: DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR WORK AND RETIREMENT Provided by TIAA-CREF I n 2012, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences issued a comprehensive report documenting the aging of the U.S. population and analyzing the economic effects this phenomenon may trigger over the next 40 years. The report, Aging and the Macroeconomy: Long-Term Implications of an Older Population, identified two potential policy strategies for mitigating the economic consequences of population aging: 1) enabling people to increase their savings for retirement; and 2) encouraging people to postpone retirement by working longer.1 In November 2013, the TIAA-CREF Institute and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation sponsored a colloquium of researchers and policy analysts to discuss how to help people save more and work longer.2 The colloquium, Towards a Policy www.conferomag.com || 19 www.conferomag.com 17