May 2017

24May

The Impact of Partisanship in the Era of Retrenchment. Insights from Quantitative Welfare State Research

By Frank Bandau (University of Bamberg) Does government partisanship matter when it comes to the size and generosity of the welfare state? While the answer to this question is clearly positive for the ‘golden age’, there is so far no clear-cut answer with regard to the subsequent era of welfare retrenchment. This is by no means due to a lack of research. Quite to the contrary, a substantial number of macro-quantitative studies published over the past 15 years have addressed...

May 24, 2017
Adequacy, Articles, Regulation,
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March 2017

01Mar

The Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (General Levy) (Amendment) Regulations 2017

The general levy on occupational and personal pension schemes recovers the core funding provided by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for 3 public bodies: The Pensions Regulator The Pensions Advisory Service The Pensions Ombudsman This consultation seeks views on the proposed rates of the levy for the financial year 2017/18 onwards. This consultation is primarily aimed at pension scheme trustees, managers and administrators. We also welcome comments from the wider public. (more…)

March 1, 2017
Adequacy, Articles, Pension design, Regulation, , ,
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February 2017

28Feb

Retirement Spending and Biological Age

By Huang Huaxiong, Moshe A. Milevsky & T. S. Salisbury (York University) Abstract:     We solve a retirement lifecycle model in which the consumer's age does not move in lockstep with calendar time. Instead, biological age increases at a stochastic non-linear rate in chronological age, which one can think of as working with a clock that occasionally moves backwards in time. Our paper is inspired by the growing body of medical literature that has identified biomarkers of aging which --...

February 28, 2017
Adequacy, Aging, Articles, Savings, , , , , ,
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04Feb

How does pension eligibility affect labor supply in couples?

By Rafael Lalive & Parrotta Pierpaolo Many OECD countries are reforming their pension systems. We investigate how pension eligibility affects labor supply in couples. Inspired by a theoretical framework, we measure how the sharp change in the pension eligibility of both partners affects labor force participation. We find that both partners leave the labor force as they become eligible for a pension. The effect of their own pension eligibility is 12 percentage points for women and 28 percentage points for...

February 4, 2017
Adequacy, Aging, Books, Labor Market
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04Feb

Promised and Affordable Replacement Rates in LAC Pension Systems in 2015 and 2100: Methodology and Determinants

By Solange Berstein, Mariano Bosch & María Oliveri This note, originally prepared as an appendix for the 2016 Development in the Americas Report, Saving for Development, surveys the methodology and assumptions used in the discussion of replacement rates for pension systems in Latin America and the Caribbean. (more…)

February 4, 2017
Adequacy, Articles, Pension design,
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04Feb

The Effect of Non-contributory Pensions on Saving in Mexico

By IADB This paper examines the effects of non-contributory pension programs at the federal and state levels on Mexican households’ saving patterns using micro data from the Mexican Income and Expenditure Survey. The federal program by itself appears to reduce the saving rate of households whose oldest member is either 18 to 54 or 65 to 69. State programs by themselves have no significant effects on household saving rates in the smallest localities, but in larger localities they may reduce...

February 4, 2017
Adequacy, Articles, Pension design, , ,
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04Feb

Non-Contributory Pensions and Savings: Evidence from Argentina

By Martín González-Rozada & Hernán Ruffo This paper examines the effects of Argentina’s Plan de Inclusión Previsional (PIP), which changed the pension system in a way that generated a new noncontributory pillar, produced a huge expansion in pension coverage between 2005 and 2008 and a transfer of a vast amount of resources to households. Using a difference in differences methodology it is found that the PIP policy has reduced the incentives to work and to be in the labor force...

February 4, 2017
Adequacy, Articles, Pension design, , ,
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04Feb

Taxing Kenya’s M-Pesa Picks the Pockets of the Poor

By Liliana Rojas-Suarez Kenya has instituted a new tax that affects users of M-Pesa -- a widely popular phone-based money transfer service used by more than half of Kenya’s adult population. The new 10 percent excise duty on fees charged for money transfer services applies to mobile phone providers, banks, and other money transfer agencies. Operated by Safaricom, the largest mobile network operator in Kenya, M-Pesa accounts for the largest share of users of money transfer services. Users of M-Pesa...

February 4, 2017
Adequacy, Articles,
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04Feb

Aging, Social Security Design, and Capital Accumulation

By Antoine Dedry, Harun Onder & Pierre Pestieau This paper analyzes the impact of aging on capital accumulation and welfare in a country with a sizable unfunded social security system. Using a two-period overlapping generation model with potentially endogenous retirement decisions, the paper shows that the type of aging, i.e. declining fertility or increasing longevity, and the type of unfunded social security system, i.e. defined contributions or defined benefits, are important in understanding this impact. Moreover, the analysis provides a...

February 4, 2017
Adequacy, Articles, Pension design,
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