December 2021

US. News and analysis for those planning for or living in retirement

I’ll have $5 million for retirement when I sell my dental practice next year – but my wife and kids don’t want me to retire: Retiring can be emotional, and not just for the individual. When should I claim Social Security? The dilemma and the strategy: So many factors go into deciding when to begin Social Security benefits, and the wrong choice can have dire consequences on how much someone ultimately receives. A plan for aging in place: How we’re turning...

Aging, Retirement and Economic Growth

By Chao Ma & Xiangbo Liu This paper aims at examining the effects of an increase in life expectancy on long-run growth boosted through endogenous human capital accumulation. We first justify the negative growth effects of population aging by developing a three-period overlapping generation (OLG) model with private and public education systems and a social security scheme of a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) nature. In our model, government expenditure structure is allowed to adapt to demographic shifts for the purpose of maintaining...

Pension Reform and Labor Supply

By Andrew C. Johnston & Jonah Rockoff As unfunded pension liabilities mount, governments experiment with ways to curb the costs of pensions. We examine the effect of one such reform on the retention and productivity of public-sector workers. The reform reduced pension annuities and increased penalties for early retirement, projected to save 8 percent of revenues. We use the fact that the reform only applied to workers below age and experience cutoffs to estimate the effect of the reform. We...

The impact of non-contributory cash transfers on poverty in Latin America

By Simone Cecchini, Pablo Villatoro & Xavier Mancero This article assesses the impact of conditional cash transfers, social pensions and other non-contributory transfers on different indicators of poverty and extreme poverty in Latin America, based on an analysis of household surveys from 15 countries in the region between 2014 and 2017. It is found that in 2017, the combined effect of non-contributory social protection programmes reduced simple regional averages for poverty by 2.0 percentage points and for extreme poverty by...

México. Plantean que derechohabientes accedan a ahorro voluntario en caso de emergencia sanitaria o económica

México. Plantean que derechohabientes accedan a ahorro voluntario en caso de emergencia sanitaria o económica

El diputado Alejandro Carvajal Hidalgo (Morena) propuso una reforma a la Ley de los Sistemas de Ahorro para el Retiro, con el objetivo de que los derechohabientes puedan acceder a los recursos acumulados en su ahorro voluntario o ahorro complementario para el retiro en caso de emergencia sanitaria o económica. Leer también México. Siempre sí: Tope a Afores entrará en vigor en 2022 En un comunicado, detalló que en caso de emergencia sanitaria declarada por el Consejo de Salubridad General o...

US. 3 NYC pension funds divest $3 billion from fossil fuels

Three of five pension funds in the $266.7 billion New York City Retirement Systems have divested about $3 billion in fossil fuel company holdings, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer announced Wednesday. The divestment "is proof positive that environmental and fiscal responsibility go hand-in-hand," Mr. Stringer, the fiduciary of the five pension funds in the city system, said in a news release. "New York City is leading the way toward a clean, green and sustainable economy, and the impacts of...

Aging Germany Is Running Out of Workers, Putting Europe’s Largest Economy at Risk

Germany has long been ahead of the curve as a source of technical innovation and manufacturing. Now it is leading much of the developed world toward a demographic cliff edge that could put a damper on Europe’s largest economy, raising pressure on its pension system and pushing inflation higher for years to come. Economists forecast that Germany’s workforce could peak as soon as 2023 and then shrink by up to five million people by the end of the decade. While...

Leveraging identification to extend social insurance to the informal sector

Leveraging identification to extend social insurance to the informal sector

Providing pensions and other forms of social insurance to people requires keeping track of large numbers of individuals over long periods of time. There is little margin for error. Allocating contributions of one individual to the pension of another not only affects individual fates. It also risks undermining the trust in the entire system and without trust social insurance cannot work. In the formal economy with contractual employer-employee relationships, the identification of an individual over a long period can (at...

Puerto Rico oversight board sues to stop new pension benefits

The Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico said it filed a lawsuit to stop the local government from offering public workers billions in new retirement benefits that it says will undermine the island's long-sought plan to restructure its debt. In a statement issued Monday, the board said it had filed the suit in Puerto Rico District Court to stop the pension measures — known as Act 80, Act 81, and Act 82 — because they are being pushed...

Puerto Rico. La Junta de Control Fiscal demanda al gobierno para anular leyes de retiro

Puerto Rico. La Junta de Control Fiscal demanda al gobierno para anular leyes de retiro

La implementación de las leyes 80, 81 y 82 fue puesta en jaque ayer por la Junta de Control Fiscal (JCF) con la presentación de una demanda en la corte de Título III contra el gobierno de Puerto Rico. Leer también Puerto Rico. La Junta de Control Fiscal lleva al tribunal federal su oposición a la Ley de retiro digno para policías El recurso tiene el propósito de que el gobierno desista de poner en vigor las leyes por entender que...