The Trend in Lifetime Earnings Inequality and Its Impact on the Distribution of Retirement Income

*Barry Bosworth and Gary Burtless are both Senior Fellows at The Brookings Institution. Claudia Sahm is a Research Assistant at The Brookings Institution. The research reported herein was supported by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College pursuant to a grant from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) funded as part of the Retirement Research Consortium. It is based in part on tabulations originally performed under a contract of the SSA with the Urban Institute to extend and validate the findings of SSA’s Model of Income in the Near Term (MINT). The opinions and conclusions are solely those of the authors and should not be construed as representing the opinions or policy of the Social Security Administration or any agency of the Federal Government, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, The Brookings Institution, or the Urban Institute.