Universal/Lifetime Savings Accounts

Among America’s founding principles is the ideal that each citizen’s ability to succeed—to achieve financial security, to do better than the generation that came before—should be as limitless as individual potential. A sound national savings policy is essential to achieving the American Dream. Policymakers have long identified saving as the key to a secure retirement. But the benefits of saving are far broader. Having the opportunity to save at every point in the life cycle enables people to get an… more

American Stakeholder Accounts would likely cost about $30 billion annually, similar to the Earned Income Tax Credit. Possible benefits of this proposal include less intergenerational poverty and positive social, civic, and psychological impacts. Similar accounts, through a Child Trust Fund program, which is being implemented in the United Kingdom under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

In addition to the Asset Building program, New America also hosts a retirement security program, headed up by Michael Calabrese and Maya MacGuineas. New America?s Retirement Security program studies, designs, and advocates reforms to expand pension coverage, particularly for lower-income workers, with the goal of creating a universal and completely portable system of saving accounts that benefits employees and employers alike. The program also researches and proposes new ways to update Social Security through reforms designed to increase retirement flexibility,… more

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