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The
Pension Action Center, working
with a grant from the AARP, is
studying three years’ worth
of closed full-service cases
to determine how
many involved a “lost
pension” (where the original
employer went bankrupt or was
swallowed up with no clear
trail leading to the pension
fund).
The purpose of the
study is to analyze the kinds
of situations in which lost
pensions arise.
The
study is being conducted by
Ellen Bruce, Director of the
Pension Action Center, and
John Turner of the AARP Public
Policy Institute.
Pension counselors
Janet Cote and Renee Summers
helped with data collection,
and PhD candidate Dongsoo Lee
is providing data analysis
assistance.
Preliminary
results indicate that 22% of
the Project’s cases during
the period 1999–2001
involved lost pensions.
Strikingly, while
Project counselors were able
to obtain benefits for clients
in 34% of all cases, the
success rate in cases
involving lost pensions is
43%.
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