February 2017

04Feb

Workers’ Knowledge of their Pension Coverage: A Reevaluation

By Martha Starr-McCluer & Annika Sundén Because employer-provided pensions represent an important source of income during retirement, accurate information on pension coverage would seem to be crucial for making sound decisions on retirement timing, saving and portfolio allocation. However, previous research suggests that workers’ knowledge of their pension provisions is often incomplete or incorrect. This paper re-examines workers’ knowledge of their pension coverage, using matched employer-employee data from the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances. We find that, while...

February 4, 2017
Aging, Articles, Labor Market,
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04Feb

Aging and Financial Victimization: How Should the Financial Service Industry Respond?

By Marguerite DeLiema and Martha Deevy Elder financial victimization is a growing problem facing older Americans. As the conduits of financial transactions, financial firms are positioned to stop losses at their source. Representatives at small and large firms were interviewed to describe their financial exploitation training and prevention programs, their detection and response protocols, and how they balance the goals of client protection with the client’s right to autonomy and privacy in financial decision-making. Representatives from regulatory agencies were interviewed...

February 4, 2017
Aging, Articles, Corporate Governance, ,
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04Feb

Ageing and Poverty in Africa and the Role of Social Pensions

By Nanak Kakwani & Kalanidhi Subbarao In many low income African countries, three factors are placing an undue burden on the elderly. First, the burden on the elderly has enormously increased with the increase in mortality of prime age adults due to HIV AIDS pandemic and regional conflicts. Second, the traditional safety net of the extended family has become ineffective and unreliable for the elderly. Third, in a few countries, the elderly are called upon to shoulder the responsibility of...

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

Social Security in Theory and Practice (II): Efficiency Theories

By Casey B. Mulligan & Xavier Sala-i-Martin 166 countries have some kind of public old age pension.What economic forces create and sustain old age Social Security as a public program? Mulligan and Sala-i-Martin (1999b) document several of the internationally and historically common features of social security programs, and explore "political" theories of Social Security. This paper discusses the "efficiency theories", which view creation of the SS program as a full of partial solution to some market failure. Efficiency explanations of social...

February 4, 2017
Aging, Articles, Labor Market,
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04Feb

Is Asia Prepared for an Aging Population?

By Peter Heller Many Asian countries (such as China, Singapore, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines) will experience a significant aging of their populations during the next several decades. This paper explores how these aging Asian countries are addressing and anticipating the challenges of an aging society. It suggests that Asia's preparedness for an aging population is decidedly mixed. While growth policies have been successful, much work is still needed in many countries to establish an adequate and...

February 4, 2017
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, ,
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04Feb

Risk of Disability, Old Age and Death: Pension Sustainability in Colombia

By Sergio Clavijo, Alejandro Vera Sandoval, David Malagón, Laura Clavijo, Andrea Ríos Serna, Ekaterina Cuellar & Nelson Vera This document concludes that the sustainability of the RPM (Pay-as-you-go, defined benefits public regime) looks fragile and is threatened by massive transfers from the RAIS (defined contributions private regime) to the RPM. The fiscal deficit of the RPM could be rising from 140% of GDP (in NPV) to 228% of GDP during the next three decades on account of the migration of...

February 4, 2017
Aging, Articles, System Sustainability,
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04Feb

Tailored Aid for a Tailored Age?

By David Wheeler In this short essay, senior fellow David Wheeler compares the world’s foreign assistance architecture to how the rest of the world operates in the digital age. He suggests that multilateral and bilateral transactions from one behemoth to another (B2B) may be stuck in the past now that technology can and should create more person-to-person (P2P) foreign aid programs. The foreign assistance world, he argues, should learn from the worlds of business, entertainment, and interpersonal communications, which are fragmenting...

February 4, 2017
Aging, Articles
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04Feb

The Effect of Workplace Pensions on Household Saving: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Taiwan

By Tzu-Ting Yang Population aging causes financial imbalance in pay-as-you-go public pension programs.To remedy this problem while ensuring the adequacy of retirement savings for employees, many countries complement or substitute for public pensions by regulating workplace pensions. This paper exploits a pension reform in Taiwan that has mandated, since 2005, that all private-sector employers contribute at least 6% of wages to employees' individual pension accounts monthly. I use the workers in the unaffected sector as a comparison group and employ...

February 4, 2017
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, Regulation,
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04Feb

Sustainability of Pension Systems in Europe – The Demographic Challenge

By Chris Daykin Fiscal sustainability of pensions is a serious issue in Europe because of the ageing of the population but there is also concern that reformed pensions may not be adequate. Actuaries have always been seen as major players in employer-sponsored pension schemes and insured pensions but have often not been very visible in commenting on public policy issues concerning the pension system as a whole. This article introduces the work being done by the Actuarial Association of Europe...

February 4, 2017
Aging, Articles, Labor Market,
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04Feb

Older Peoples’ Willingness to Delay Social Security Claiming

By Raimond Maurer & Olivia S. Mitchell We have designed and fielded an experimental module in the 2014 HRS which seeks to measure older persons’ willingness to voluntarily defer claiming of Social Security benefits. In addition, we evaluate the stated willingness of older individuals to work longer, depending on the Social Security incentives offered to delay claiming their benefits. Our project extends previous work by analyzing the results from our HRS module and comparing findings from other data sources which...

February 4, 2017
Aging, Articles, Labor Market
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