Overview
Alicia H. Munnell is the Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences at Boston College's Carroll School of Management and founding Director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College (CRR). She is one of the leading authorities on Social Security, pension policy, and retirement income adequacy in the United States. Her research covers replacement rates, retirement timing, 401(k) adequacy, and public pension systems. Co-author with Mauricio Soto of the 2005 CRR brief clarifying the three sources of confusion in Social Security replacement rate measurement.
Key Contributions / Features
- Showed that the policy model replacement rate (42%) and the actual beneficiary replacement rate (42%) agree by coincidence, not by design — three offsetting measurement differences cancel out
- Distinguished AIME-based from career-average-earnings-based replacement rates; showed AIME-based rates are 6 pp higher for the medium earner (48% vs. 42%)
- Documented actual earnings gaps (men: 6 zero-earning years; women: 13) and their effect on replacement rates via the progressive benefit formula
- State SSDI application rate variation (Coe et al. 2011): Co-author of CRR study finding that health, demographics, and employment explain >70% of cross-state SSDI application variation; TDI mandates and strict HI market regulation independently reduce applications. See Geographic Variation in Disability Insurance.
- Extensive body of work on 401(k) adequacy, state pension funding gaps, and Social Security reform options through CRR
- COVID survivor selection (Wettstein et al. 2022): Co-author of CRR brief finding that COVID's selective mortality among already-high-risk groups reduced 10-year mortality ~1 pp for the oldest survivors, but the effect is modest relative to the scale of COVID deaths
Related
Sources