The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has been awarded $2.9 million by the Social Security Administration (SSA) for fiscal year 2021. The Center is one of four organizations funded by the SSA’s Retirement and Disability Research Consortium, which provides funding for interdisciplinary research related to Social Security’s various program areas and target populations.

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Alicia H. Munnell, Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences and Director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College

The new grant will fund research projects that examine, among other topics, whether Social Security is an economic equalizer, and how COVID-19 has affected older workers’ participation in the labor force. The Center also received a separate award from the SSA totalling $187,000, which will sponsor a study examining the share of state and local workers who earn pension benefits through their employers but fall short of Social Security coverage. 

Established at the Carroll School of Management in 1998, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has been called “the nation’s leading center on retirement studies” by the New York Times and is frequently cited in major news outlets and publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Washington Post, and NPR, among others. Headed by the Carroll School’s Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences Alicia Munnell, the Center is also closely monitoring the impact of COVID-19 on Americans’ retirement security, and provides these findings on their website.