Ep.166 – Samantha Prince on Retirement Vesting

Samantha Prince, assistant professor of law at Penn State Dickinson Law, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss her article Megacompany Employee Churn Meets 401(k) Vesting Schedules: A Sabotage on Workers' Retirement Wealth. In this article Prince problematizes the use of vesting schedules in employer-sponsored 401(k) plans, especially at companies with employee-churn rates that make it likely that few employees ever actually receive promised 401(k) matching contributions. Given the disproportionate number of people of color working in such high-churn positions, Prince observes that the 401(k)-vesting problem has downstream effects on racial wealth inequality. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, with editing by Steven Rozenfeld, a third-year student at Brooklyn Law School.