"Downhill From Here," Katherine S. Newman, Metropolitan, 322 pages, $30.
Katherine S. Newman's excellent new book, "Downhill From Here: Retirement Insecurity in the Age of Inequality," evokes the contrast between what retirement means in today's America and what it is supposed to mean.
Newman is a gifted writer and the author of more than a dozen books, including "No Shame in My Game," about the travails of the urban working poor. As she has done in her previous work, Newman creates vivid individual portraits in her latest book to humanize her analysis.
As Newman's title suggests, the crisis of retirement insecurity reflects the larger problem of economic inequality in today's America. Running through Newman's wide-ranging narrative is a river of broken promises. Social Security monthly payments have not kept pace. Promised pensions were not funded soundly. Private savings like 401(k)s took a beating in the Great Recession (as well as the defined benefit pensions that were left).
Social Security, for all its flaws, was relatively unscathed. That suggests the value of a public pension system that is insulated, and that insulates beneficiaries, from cyclical turbulence, feckless employers and poor individual choices.
Newman's compelling portrait of the grim state of retirement security in the United States should serve as a catalyst for major reforms. That is hard to imagine in today's poisoned political climate. But perhaps well-grounded and lucid chronicles like Newman's can help to build the sense of urgency and shared purpose that will be needed to turn the tide.
WASHINGTON POST
