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This document contains 4 charts and 15 tables describing the pension coverage of workers and the income of retirees in the United States as of 1984. Data were gathered through the fourth wave topical module to the 1984 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, conducted from September through December of 1984. The prevalence of pension coverage among different segments of the population, the reliance on employee-directed retirement plans, and differences in the level of economic well-being of today's retirees are some of the topics discussed in this report. Some highlights of the report are the following: (1) two-thirds of the nation's wage and salary workers, aged 25 and over, were covered by employer-sponsored public and private pensions; (2) about 90 percent of workers in firms with 1,000 or more employees were covered by pension plans, compared with one-quarter of those in firms with fewer than 25 employees; (3) pension coverage ranged from only 38 percent of workers with monthly earnings under $500 to 84 percent of those earning $2,000 or more; (4) about one-fifth of wage and salary workers aged 25 or over had individual retirement accounts (IRAs), whereas only 12 percent of workers earning under $1,000 monthly participated in an IRA; (5) the average monthly pension for the 11.5 million retirees receiving a pension was $570, and combined Social Security and pension income brought the average to $930; and (6) the 6.7 million retirees who had pensions with cost-of-living adjustment provisions had average pensions nearly 80 percent higher than retirees with no cost-of-living provisions. (KC)

1Boy Crusoe

By Allan Eric

Also published as" A Yankee Crusoe" . A 15 year old hard working and studious farm boy finds the lure of adventure on the seas as a merchant seaman more than he can resist. This is his story. " I was born in a little town in the State of Maine, near the close of the Civil War. My boyhood life did not differ materially from that of the average farmer's son in the remote country districts of New England--except, perhaps, that I read more and thought more. Hard work on the rugged soil, two terms each year in the little yellow country schoolhouse, a day's fishing now and then filled the early years of my life full to over-flowing. " What he gets is enough excitement and adventure to overflow his wildest dreams. How he experiences disaster and uses his wits and knowledge to overcome every problem makes for a great read. - Summary by Phil Chenevert