Friday 15 June 2007

Scare-mongering on Retirement at CBC and Canadian Institute of Actuaries

Yesterday the CBC posted an article on its website titled "Most boomers aren't saving enough for retirement, actuaries say". When I saw the headline, I figured it looked worth a read but it isn't. Why? No specifics, that's why. It makes vague references to people not saving enough for a "comfortable retirement". What does that mean? One would expect that a reputable organization like the Canadian Institute of Actuaries would fund a meaningful, probably unbiased study. The article does say that the researchers who wrote the study came from the University of Waterloo. However, should you want, as I did, to see the report and the specific calculations that produced that scary headline, it isn't available. There's no link from the CBC and the website of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries doesn't seem to have it either. A news release which has a less scary, more neutral title "Planning for Retirement: Are Canadians Saving Enough?" doesn't provide much more detail, except that it seems that the whole study resides on profiles and scenarios of types of families and not, for instance, on surveys of the actual savings of families. The bottom line is muddled - it seems to be a study that questions more than accuses. It is certainly not worthy of CBC's sensationalized headline. So why doesn't the CIA make the study public?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree.

Canadian Dream had a similar post -
http://blog.canadian-dream-free-at-45.com/2007/06/retirement-studies-are-smoke-and.html

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