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An examination of the Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS) survivor annuity benefit
No full textThe Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) provides survivor annuity benefits for em- ployees who forfeit a portion of their annuity as a premium. In this study, we construct a Monte Carlo simulation to describe the distributions and implied internal rates of return for FERS annuitants who elect a joint and survivor annuity. Our analysis suggests that the survivor benefit program is quite lucrative for most male retirees. In contrast, the program is less rewarding for female retirees, especially if younger than their spouse. For many female retirees, the program actually produces a negative return. Retirees and planners can use our results to make more informed annuity decisions
A framework for analyzing defined benefit pension insurance: The survivor benefit plan for veterans
No full textMillions of defined benefit pensioners must select a pension insurance method. We present a framework for making this decision within the context of U.S. military veterans’ Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP). Federal government subsidies generate a positive expected net payout for SBP. While insurance outcomes are typically skewed, the asymmetry of SBP outcomes is stark. In a common scenario, five percent of participants receive 60% of benefits. An alternative financial planning approach incorporates private insurance and investments and often bests the SBP. Actuarially correct life expectancy, moral hazard, taxes, and individual financial needs all play important roles in selecting a pension insurance program
Who uses robo-advisory services, and who does not?
No full textThe purpose of this study was to compare the demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral character- istics of U.S. consumers in their current and expected use of robo-advisory services, traditional financial planning services, or a combination of the two services. Findings showed a difference between those who used robo-advisory services and those who used traditional financial planning services. Overall, those who used a traditional financial planner were older and reported higher levels of net worth, while users of robo-advisors, on average, reported lower levels of net worth. In addition, those who used traditional financial planning services reported a larger percentage of their total net worth from an inheritance, whereas a lower percentage of net worth from an inheritance was reported by robo-advisor users. Results showed that users of robo-advisory services generally (1) had lower income, (2) had lower net worth, (3) had received no or less inheritance, and (4) were less impulsive financially
Community in Crisis: Confronting Our Heroin Epidemic and Leveraging Community Engagement to Address a Pressing Issue
Get PDFIn the fall of 2015, Northern Kentucky University began a sustained, multidimensional effort to explore our region’s devastating heroin epidemic. The goal was to engage NKU’s students, faculty, and staff with the community through public dialogue, experiential learning, and research. Taken together, our engagements would contribute to public understanding of the crisis and its scope, as well as to evidence-based solutions in every relevant sector, including social and human services, education, public policy, and health care. The initiative began as all such engagement should: with the university listening to the community and then structuring our plans according to that counsel. The purpose of this article is to describe this effort and its outcomes, thus providing a template for colleges and universities wishing to engage deeply around an important community topic
Knowledge for Social Change: Bacon, Dewey, and the Revolutionary Transformation of Research Universities in the Twenty-First Century
Get PDFLessons Learned From 30 Years of a University-Community Engagement Center
Get PDFThe University of Pittsburgh Office of Child Development (OCD) has practiced university–community engagement activities for 30 years. This has included hundreds of specific projects conducted with community partners, all funded by outside grants. Based on our experience, we describe some lessons learned regarding the operation of a university–community engagement unit, the conduct of community-engaged scholarship, and some of the challenges that the engagement endeavor poses to traditional research universities. These themes are discussed in the hope that other engagement units can benefit from these experiences
Utilizing Domestic Off-Campus Experiences to Influence Social Justice Awareness and Career Development
Get PDFThis study examines the transformative experiences of a group of academic coaches who participated in the Target New Transitions (TNT) program during the 2014–2015 academic year. The TNT program trains undergraduate students, through professional development workshops and reflective exercises, to serve as year-round academic coaches for first-year students in Chicago’s most impoverished high school districts. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 20 academic coaches in order to understand the transformative nature of the program in relation to social justice learning, translatable skills and values, and career development. Findings demonstrate that significant learning occurred in relation to coaches’ awareness of social justice issues, including issues of power, privilege, and systemic causes of inequality; that learning was translatable to other academic and nonacademic settings; and that many students developed greater commitments to public service careers. Implications are also presented for colleges interested in further anchoring their institutional commitments within their local communities
Fostering eABCD: Asset-Based Community Development in Digital Service-Learning
Get PDFThe continuing expansion of digital service-learning is bringing emergent dynamics to the field of community engagement, including the challenge of fostering asset-based views of community partners in online spaces. “Online disinhibition” (Suler, 2004) can prompt harsh critique or insensitive language that would not have occurred during face-to-face relationships. Traditionally, the field of community engagement has drawn on asset-based community development (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993), which calls for relationship-driven, asset-based, and internally focused partnerships, to encourage ethical and positive interactions with community members. However, this theory was not originally intended for digital, text-based interactions. This article explores how aspects of asset-based community development might be enacted in online partnerships, in electronic asset-based community development (eABCD). A case study of a digital writing partnership between college students and rural youth is used to illustrate how students can be supported in asset-based, relationship-driven, and internally focused interactions in online service-learning collaborations