March 2018

19Mar

Malta. Pensions boomerang hits MPs

The ill-conceived plan to enact legislation giving members of Parliament more privileges backfired. It also severely hit the reputation of parliamentarians to get their priorities right when discussing their own remuneration packages. In a nutshell, the primary provision of the proposed legislation was to give the opportunity for MPs who served in Parliament for one term to qualify for a full MP pension. So far, an MP has to serve two five-year terms to be eligible for a pension. In a...

March 19, 2018
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19Mar

UK. Jail threat for rogue bosses who risk workers´ pensions

Rogue bosses who risk workers’ pensions face being jailed for up to two years under plans to criminalise unscrupulous business activities. Theresa May said a new package of measures would help protect staff by cracking down on the “irresponsible few” at the top of companies. It comes after the collapse of BHS in 2016 with a £571 million deficit in its pot for 19,000 pension holders. Read More: Daily Mail

March 19, 2018
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19Mar

Kenya. Nairobi Pensioners risk not getting pay-outs owing to a Sh13billion City Hall debt to Laptrust

Retired City Hall employees risk losing their pension dues amounting to Sh13 billion. This follows failure by the Nairobi county government to remit contributions to the fund manager. Local Authorities Pensions Trust (Laptrust) retirement scheme, which manages City Hall’s pensions scheme, says the county has not remitted pension deductions since 2013. It estimates the debt to be about Sh13 billion. Laptrust, which also manages pension schemes for workers of other county governments in the country, has threatened to take over prime...

March 19, 2018
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19Mar

When I’m Sixty-four: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them

By Teresa Ghilarducci A crisis is looming for baby boomers and anyone else who hopes to retire in the coming years. In When I'm Sixty-Four, Teresa Ghilarducci, the nation's leading authority on the economics of retirement, explains how to confront this crisis head-on, revealing the causes behind the increasingly precarious economics of old age in America and proposing a bold plan to guarantee retirement security for every working citizen. Retirement is one of the hallmarks of a prosperous, civilized market...

March 19, 2018
Books, Pension design, Savings, ,
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19Mar

Gender and Social Security Reform: What’s Fair for Women?

By Neil Gilbert Aging populations are creating tremendous pressures on social security systems throughout the world, lifting the need for reform to the top of policy agendas. Proposed reforms often have different implications for men and women. At the same time, traditional family and gender roles are changing with the decline in fertility rates and the rapid rise in women's participation in the paid labor force.While trying to adapt social security systems to the fiscal demands of aging societies, policymakers...

March 19, 2018
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19Mar

The High Cost of Good Intentions: A History of U.S. Federal Entitlement Programs

By John F. Cogan Federal entitlement programs are strewn throughout the pages of U.S. history, springing from the noble purpose of assisting people who are destitute through no fault of their own. Yet as federal entitlement programs have grown, so too have their inefficiency and their cost. Neither tax revenues nor revenues generated by the national economy have been able to keep pace with their rising growth, bringing the national debt to a record peacetime level. The High Cost of...

March 19, 2018
Books, Pension design, System Sustainability, , ,
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19Mar

Rescuing Retirement

By Teresa Ghilarducci,‎ Tony James,‎ Timothy Geithner Everyone deserves to be able to retire with dignity, but this core feature of the social contract is in jeopardy. Companies have swerved away from pensions, and most of the workforce has woefully inadequate retirement savings. If we don’t act to fix this broken system, rates of impoverishment for senior citizens threaten to skyrocket, and tens of millions of Americans reaching retirement age in the coming decades will be forced to delay retirement...

March 19, 2018
Books, Labor Market, Pension design,
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19Mar

Earnings Test, Non-actuarial Adjustments and Flexible Retirement

By Axel H. Börsch-Supan, Klaus Härtl, Duarte N. Leite In response to the challenges of increasing longevity, an obvious policy response is to gradually increase the statutory eligibility age for public pension benefits and to shut down pathways to early retirement such as special rules for women. This is, however, very unpopular. As an alternative, many countries have introduced “flexibility reforms” which allow combining part-time work and partial retirement. A key measure of these reforms is the abolishment of earnings...

March 19, 2018
Articles, Labor Market, Pension design, System Sustainability,
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19Mar

The Mortality Effects of Retirement: Evidence from Social Security Eligibility at Age 62

By Maria D. Fitzpatrick, Timothy J. Moore Social Security eligibility begins at age 62, and approximately one third of Americans immediately claim at that age. We examine whether age 62 is associated with a discontinuous change in aggregate mortality, a key measure of population health. Using mortality data that covers the entire U.S. population and includes exact dates of birth and death, we document a robust two percent increase in male mortality immediately after age 62. The change in female...

March 19, 2018
Aging, Articles
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19Mar

Social Security Claiming Decisions: Survey Evidence

By John B. Shoven, Sita Nataraj Slavov & David A. Wise While research shows that there are large gains in lifetime wealth from delaying claiming Social Security, most people claim at or before full retirement age. We fielded an original, nationally representative survey to gain insight into people’s rationales for their Social Security claiming decisions, their satisfaction with their past claiming decisions, and how they financed any gap between retirement and claiming. Common rationales for claiming Social Security before full...

March 19, 2018
Aging, Articles, Pension design, Savings, ,
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