Giving Compass' Take: 

• Governing magazine takes a look at the efforts in several states to create retirement savings programs, knowing that there is a severe lack of them at the private-sector level.

• Which approaches will prove most effective? Organizations across the US should look at the various approaches being taken and see where government and other funding can intersect.

• Another thing to consider: Unretirement is working for some older Americans.

Several states are undertaking what amounts to a significant social experiment, one that leaders and policymakers in other states will want to watch closely.

Concerned about private-sector employees' lack of retirement savings and the potential impact on poverty levels, and subsequently on state budgets, legislators in nine states — California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont and Washington — have enacted programs designed to remedy both problems.

They have good reason. Unlike most government employees, more than 30 million of the nation's private-sector workers — about a third of the workforce — lack access to a retirement savings plan through their jobs. While some of these employees may have other savings vehicles, such as individual retirement accounts (IRAs), research by The Pew Charitable Trusts has shown that only 28 percent of those without access to an employer-provided plan have any retirement savings at all ...

Their approaches vary. California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland and Oregon are launching automatic-enrollment IRAs, state-facilitated programs administered by private financial firms with plan participants bearing the program cost. New Jersey and Washington state, meanwhile, have created online marketplaces: state-managed websites listing plans administered by private firms that meet minimum standards. Massachusetts and Vermont have opted for a multiple-employer plan, which is a state-developed group 401(k) available to eligible employers (the Massachusetts plan is limited to small nonprofits).

Read the full article about the states' retirement-savings social experiment by Susan K. Urahn at Governing magazine.