I had a very difficult time reading this book. It piointed out many of the flaws in our system of caring for our retirees using case studies that were upsetting but did not offer any solutions either personal or societal.

I got "Downhill From Here: Retirement Insecurity in the Age of Inequality" by Katherine S. Newman as a gag gift for my parents who will be retiring in the next ten years or so. Turns out it is pretty good and is not so much of a gag gift after all. ( )

Difficult topic to read about, if only because retirement insecurity is a pressing problem for almost everyone. Overall the book was well-written, engaging. It is also more a history book than a helpful guide that provides solutions.Very focused on pensions, which is a bit frustrating as pensions are off the table for most people entering the job force today. ( )

This book is jam-packed with real-life stories and statistics. Even though the topic is difficult and there is a lot of information, the author makes it easy to read and digest. I feel like everyone in political leadership should read this. ( )

Overall, worth the read. But incomplete, and I believe inappropriately focused on pensions. Even at their height, only 38% of workers had pensions (does that even include non-“workers” like caregivers and the informal workforce)?. Now hardly anyone has a pension. Are you recommending we bring pensions back or focus on Social Security, as you seem to suggest at the end? And while it asks the important moral questions (but only at the end) of what should an employer’s promise mean, you don’t address whether they should make that promise in the first place. Why should they re-start that promise? That’s the question most Americans today don’t seem to believe; that we should rise up as individuals and practice self-reliance and this isn’t the role of an employer. I was born in the Reagan years and have known the America described in this book. Also, I didn’t even know pensions could include health insurance, and I never thought about that. But no policy discussions or suggestions about how we should provide healthcare to those outside the workforce. Also the author doesn’t even discuss women who don’t work or who work in the informal economy until p122! Or the fact that the number one predictor of poverty in retirement is being a mother. Second top predictor is being a woman generally. While she discussed this idea somewhat, she seems to believe it’s not a big problem anymore, mentioning just in a parenthetical that some women still do this. Women are increasingly opting out of the workforce, certainly the full-time workforce, because of all the issues mentioned in this book. When our wages can’t afford childcare, we don’t have the social support system to have free or reduced price kin-care, no benefits especially if we’re part-time, the dehumanization of the workforce that doesn’t care that we also want to meet obligations to our family, the broken healthcare system that makes it harder and more time-consuming than ever to care for anyone, especially as a sandwich generation. The problem of women not qualifying for Social Security is only going to rise, if SS will even exist. And I saw no mention of how survivor benefits work and how many homemakers cannot survive on them, especially in the era of high divorce or failure to formally marry. On the other hand, something this book did really well is being explicit about how race and racism is a serious and structural problem affecting retirement. I wish I’d seen a less-cursory discussion of women’s structural issues and a recognition that those problems aren’t going away and perhaps may be increasing.