April 2018

23Apr

Organizing Old Age Pensions for India’s Informal Workers: A Case Study of a Sector-Driven Approach

By M.R. Narayana (University of Mysore) About 88 percent of India’s total labor force is composed of informal (officially labeled “unorganized”) workers. As many as 388 million such workers lack old age income security by way of a pension system. The Atal Pension Yojana (APY) is the latest contributory, national-level old age pension scheme for unorganized workers, with an entry age of 18–40 years. In other words, all current unorganized workers above the age of 40 are excluded. How could...

April 23, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, Pension design, , ,
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23Apr

Organizing Old Age Pensions for India's Informal Workers: A Case Study of a Sector-Driven Approach

By M.R. Narayana (University of Mysore) About 88 percent of India’s total labor force is composed of informal (officially labeled “unorganized”) workers. As many as 388 million such workers lack old age income security by way of a pension system. The Atal Pension Yojana (APY) is the latest contributory, national-level old age pension scheme for unorganized workers, with an entry age of 18–40 years. In other words, all current unorganized workers above the age of 40 are excluded. How could...

April 23, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, Pension design, , ,
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15Apr

On Welfare Effects of Increasing Retirement Age

By Krzysztof Makarski (National Bank of Poland; Warsaw School of Economics (SGH)) & Joanna Tyrowicz (National Bank of Poland; University of Warsaw) We develop an OLG model with realistic assumptions about longevity to analyze the welfare effects of raising the retirement age. We look at a scenario where an economy has a pay-as-you-go defined benefit scheme and compare it to a scenario with defined contribution schemes (funded or notional). We show that, initially, in both types of pension system schemes...

April 15, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, , ,
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09Apr

The Relation Between the Migration, Population Aging, Labor Force Productivity and Economic Growth: An Analysis for Bulgaria

By Hamit Can (Technical University of Sofia) & Venelin Terziev (Vasil Levski National Military University; University of Ruse) In this study, the relationship between population, elderly population and economic growth is analyzed theoretically, taking into account the demographic change of the Bulgarian population and the more aging phenomenon. Thus, the change in the age structure of the Bulgarian population was investigated and the factors affecting the growth of the relationship between economic growth were investigated. Developed countries are trying to...

April 9, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, System Sustainability, ,
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02Apr

Political Preferences and the Aging of Populations: Political-economy Explanations of Pension Reform

By Oliver Pamp Oliver Pamp analyzes the likelihood and extent of pension reforms from a political-economy perspective. It is shown that voters’ preferences for or against reforms are influenced by a societies’ demographic development, the generosity of its existing public pension scheme and its electoral system. The author extensively reviews existing formal models of pension systems, discusses their merits and limitations, and develops a three-period overlapping generations model. The model’s insights regarding individual reform preferences are then put into the...

April 2, 2018
Aging, Books, System Sustainability, ,
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March 2018

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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11Mar

Causes and Characteristics of Population Aging

By Kyounghoon Park (The Bank of Korea) Korea’s level of population aging remains lower than the OECD average. However, the pace of population aging in Korea is faster than that of many other member countries, as its total fertility rate is the lowest among OECD countries while its life expectancy exceeds the OECD average. Using panel data from OECD member countries, this paper divides the common causes of population aging in OECD countries into declining fertility rate and increasing life...

March 11, 2018
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08Mar

Old-age Labor Force Participation in Germany: What Explains the Trend Reversal among Older Men? And What the Steady Increase among Women?

By Axel Börsch-Supan, Irene Ferrari The aim of this paper is to illustrate for Germany the factors that may explain the U-shaped pattern of older men’s labor force participation - from a long declining trend that began in the early 1970s to an increasing trend starting from the late 1990s - and at the same time the steady increase in older women’s labor force participation. In a first step, we provide graphical evidence of the trends of various variables which...

March 8, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, ,
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05Mar

How Persistent Low Expected Returns Alter Optimal Life Cycle Saving, Investment, and Retirement Behavior

By Vanya Horneff, Raimond Maurer & Olivia S. Mitchell This paper explores how an environment of persistent low returns influences saving, investing, and retirement behaviors, as compared to what in the past had been thought of as more “normal” financial conditions. Our calibrated lifecycle dynamic model with realistic tax, minimum distribution, and Social Security benefit rules produces results that agree with observed saving, work, and claiming age behavior of U.S. households. In particular, our model generates a large peak at...

March 5, 2018
Aging, Articles, Investing, Savings, , ,
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