Warshawsky on Retirement Income Combination Strategies

The Mercatus Center just pushed a bunch of papers out onto SSRN on topics related to pensions and retirement.  Several are authored by Mark Warshawsky, someone whose work I have read and respected in the past.  Here is one example from the recent push:

Reforming Retirement Income: Annuitization, Combination Strategies, and Required Minimum Distributions MERCATUS WORKING PAPER, 46 Pages Posted: 7 Jun 2018

This is the abstract which deserves to be quoted in full: 

Laddered immediate life annuity purchase and asset withdrawal combination strategies represent an excellent way for retirees to manage their retirement assets in order to get lifetime income in a flexible manner while still maintaining growth, liquidity, and bequest potentials. Simulations show that even by age 95, a retiree using this strategy will get higher income, in inflation-adjusted terms, on average and across most scenarios than by using full and complete annuitization or just using the common 4 percent withdrawal rule. Moreover, a significant fund balance remains to the retiree throughout life, on average, but with no risk of running out of assets. The minimum distribution requirements that govern tax-qualified retirement accounts for older retirees should be reformed to encourage the use of these partial annuitization combination strategies. This broad reform of the required minimum distribution rules needs to be done for the same reason the Obama administration made a narrow exception to the required minimum distribution rules for longevity insurance to achieve the reasonable public policy goal of encouraging the use of partial annuitization by retirees.

I have not read the paper yet for lack of ink in the printer and I no longer read papers online. It will be in my pile shortly.