Savings Shifts in America Trends and Policies

The amount of money saved has important consequences. Nationally, the amount of saving affects how much can be invested and ultimately the size of the capital stock. Increasing the size of the capital stock is believed to be one way to raise the productivity of the labour force and the economy's long-term growth rate. Individually, saving is critical to accumulating sufficient wealth to maintain living standards after retirement. The pace of economic growth is likely to be a matter of particular importance in the decades just ahead as the economy confronts the need to effect unprecedented generational transfer of income to pay for the retirement of the baby-boom generation. This book examines how national saving is measured, presents recent estimates of saving rates in the U.S. and provides those of other major industrial countries.