WISH Granted: How a National Long-Term Services and Supports Insurance Program Could Boost Retirement Outcomes
After we showed how devastating long-term services and supports (LTSS) can be to retirement income adequacy in our last publication, our new publication analyzes how valuable a proposed legislative initiative may be to some in an attempt to mitigate its impact. The Well-Being Insurance for Seniors to be at Home (or WISH) Act would create a federal insurance program that provides benefits to those with a continual LTSS need beginning after a waiting period that ranges from one to five years, depending on one's income history. In this paper, we analyze the impact of the WISH Act on Gen Z, millennial, and Gen X retirement-income adequacy using the Morningstar Model of US Retirement Outcomes.
Key Findings
- Overall, among households projected to qualify for WISH benefits, we found that the proposal substantially reduced the share of households with a retirement shortfall. For example, the shortfall rate dropped from 58% to 28% for single women and 34% to 16% for single men.
Gen Z and millennials saw the largest reductions in the probability of running short of money in retirement due to the impact of the WISH Act.
In general, middle-income households experienced the greatest improvement in retirement-income adequacy, with shortfall rates falling by as much as 36%.
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