May 2024

ESG and sustainable finance – issues for pension schemes and their sponsors

By Travers Smith As understanding develops, pension schemes are being prompted to consider how ESG and wider sustainability factors may affect the financial performance of their investments, as well as their relationship with sponsoring employers.  In some cases, stakeholders are starting to enquire about levels of activism from their pension schemes in this area, often highlighting the wider economic and social role of pension funds as major asset owners.  Diversity and governance considerations are also attracting increasing focus. Get the report...

Green Pensions Guide. A short guide for organisations greening their money

By Make My Money Matter  All organisations from businesses to charities, from SMEs to global brands can play an important role in tackling the climate crisis. Sustainability policies have become an expected standard across all sectors and industries, yet one of the ways organisations can have the most impact is often missing from the picture. Their money. How our pensions are invested now will shape the future we’ll retire into. The companies causing irreversible climate damage like companies at the...

Female Labor Supply and Rural Pension Eligibility in Brazil

By Gaurav Khanna, Margaret Lay, Stephanie Lee & Benjamin Thompson In 1991, Brazil expanded its rural old-age pension to cover millions of previously uncovered women, conditional on work requirements.  We use a difference-in-differences approach to show that this expansion drastically increased women’s employment by nine percentage points, or 26 percent.  This increase in labor force participation occurred among women who were immediately age-eligible, and among younger cohorts that would be eligible in the future. These results illuminate the capacity of...

The Incidence of Workplace Pensions: Evidence from the Uk’s Automatic Enrollment Mandate

By Rachel Scarfe, Daniel Schaefer & Tomasz Sulka We examine who bears the costs of mandated workplace pension programs, exploiting the quasi-experimental rollout of automatic enrollment in the UK. Total compensation (take-home pay plus employer contributions) increases, driven by employer contributions, while the amount of take-home pay decreases. These effects differ by employer size, with take-home pay declining to an extent in the largest firms that we can rule out a pass-through to employees of more than 47%, significantly less...

How Hidden Costs Undermine Public Pensions in the US

 By Richard Ennis Public pension plans in the US incur exorbitant asset management costs. Most spend a lot and get nothing for it. High cost has hindered efforts to realize their actuarial return requirement. It has resulted in poor performance pretty much across the board. And yet, very few plans provide a full accounting of the costs they incur. Some still fail to net all their investment expenses from the returns they report. High cost is the Achilles heel of...

Gobernanza y fondos de pensiones. Análisis de mejores prácticas internacionales

Por Ezequiel Avilés Ochoa & Luis Roberto Torres López  El objetivo de este texto es presentar un análisis de las mejores prácticas de gobernanza de fondos de pensiones en el contexto internacional, y estructurar un marco referencial para la orientación de la política pública de los institutos de pensiones. Por un lado, realiza una revisión teórica de la literatura científica sobre los paradigmas de la gobernanza; y por otro, ofrece resultados que muestran que las mejores prácticas incluyen: transparencia, toma...

Inteligencia artificial y planeación presupuestaria en México: promesas y retos en América Latina para la asignación del gasto público

Por David Valle-Cruz, Vanessa Fernández-Cortez & J. Ramón Gil-García La elaboración del presupuesto público es un proceso complejo que depende de una gran cantidad de factores, incluyendo la consideración de recursos escasos y la calidad de la información disponible. La inteligencia artificial (IA) tiene el potencial de descubrir modelos que ayuden a explicar fenómenos sociales complejos, como el proceso de planeación presupuestaria. Sin embargo, actualmente existen pocos trabajos que exploran la aplicación de la IA en este contexto. Este artículo...

Cuidados de la vejez y oferta laboral femenina en América Latina

Por Elisa Failache Mirza, Noemí Katzkowicz, Fabrizio Méndez Rivero, Cecilia Parada Larre B & Martina Querejeta R. El envejecimiento poblacional se posiciona como un importante cambio demográfico. Este trabajo analiza las características de los adultos mayores en situación de dependencia, las estrategias de cuidado y el perfil de personas cuidadoras para Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, El Salvador y Uruguay. La población en situación de dependencia funcional es mayoritariamente femenina y mayor de 75 años. Entre un 54 % y un 70 %...

Seguridad social y sistemas de pensiones: una valoración desde la óptica de la justicia distributiva

Por Pablo Sandoval Cabrera Cualquier sistema de pensiones viable, adecuado y sostenible debe fincarse, necesariamente, en la existencia de condiciones de equidad en la distribución de la riqueza generada por la sociedad; esto es, presupone condiciones mínimas de justicia distributiva, así como la prevalencia de oportunidades con sentido de inclusión. Partiendo de esta premisa, se establece un marco de reflexión en la búsqueda de propuestas de solución al problema pensionario y de seguridad social desde el enfoque de la justicia...

Older Adult Employment: 2021 Annual Report

By SeniorLiving.org Workers over the age of 55 represent a huge and essential segment of the American economy, and their influence is growing. In fact, by 2030, one in four U.S. workers will be 55 or older. In part because they account for such a large share of the workforce, older adults have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, and many states had a decline in the number of workers over 55 remaining in the workforce. But overall, the 55-and-older...