Work, Retire, Repeat

The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy

By: Teresa Ghilarducci, E. J. Dionne Jr.

Narrated by: Katherine Fenton

Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

This is an audiobook version of this book.

A damning portrait of the dire realities of retirement in the United States—and how we can fix it.

While the French went on strike in 2023 to protest the increase in the national retirement age, workers in the United States have all but given up on the notion of dignified retirement for all. Instead, Americans—whose elders face the highest risk of poverty compared to workers in peer nations—are fed feel-good stories about Walmart clerks who can finally retire because a customer raised the necessary funds through a GoFundMe campaign.

Many argue that the solution to the financial straits of American retirement is simple: people need to just work longer. Yet, this call to work longer is misleading in a multitude of ways, including its endangering of the health of workers and its discrimination against people who work in lower-wage occupations. In Work, Retire, Repeat, Teresa Ghilarducci tells the stories of elders locked into jobs—not because they love to work, but because they must.

But this doesn’t need to be the reality. Work, Retire, Repeat shows how relatively low-cost changes to how we finance and manage retirement will allow people to truly choose how they spend their golden years.

©2024 Teresa Ghilarducci (P)2024 University of Chicago Press

Critic reviews

"Retirement inequality is on the rise and is causing anger and democratic resentment among working classes in many countries. This fascinating book puts the central issue of retirement inequality at the forefront of political discussion. A must read."

— Thomas Piketty | author of "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"

“Work, Retire, Repeat shows the risks and decisions facing older workers today and the economic forces this complexity creates. Ghilarducci's analysis is packed with facts and original ideas for both change and how to live with today's system in the meantime. Work, Retire, Repeat may prove to be as influential as Stuart Chase’s 1932 book A New Deal."

— Robert Shiller | recipient of the 2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics

“Compared to workers in equally wealthy countries, Americans work much longer. We work more hours per week, take fewer vacations, and look ahead to a late, financially insecure retirement. Ghilarducci convincingly and heartrendingly shows that so many of us who find ourselves unable to afford to retire didn’t plan for this, but rather find out after the fact that others had punched holes in the financial buckets we thought were being filled for our retirement.”

— Brad DeLong | author of "Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century"