August 2019

The Effect of Pension Growth on the Labor Force Participation of Pensioners in Russia

By Victor Lyashok This paper examines the impact of the 34% increase in pensions in Russia at the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 on the labor market participation of pensioners. Several particular features of the pension system in Russia allow us to estimate the net effect of income from such a reform. For evaluation, we used a method combining difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity methods. The results showed that real pension growth by a third reduced labor...

Income Inequality and Government Transfers in Mexico

 By Frederic Lambert, Hyunmin Park We analyze microdata from Mexico's survey on household income and expenditures (ENIGH) to study the evolution of income inequality in Mexico over 2004-16, identify its sources, and investigate how it was affected by government social policy. We find evidence of only a small decline in inequality over this period. The observed decline may be attributed to government transfers, notably targeted cash transfers (Prospera) and non-contributory pensions. In 2016, those two programs accounted for more...

Unbelievable: ERISA’s Broken Promise

By Peter J. Wiedenbeck A central but generally neglected objective of federal regulation of pension and welfare benefit plans was to provide workers with accessible and reliable information on which to base their career and financial planning, thereby improving overall economic efficiency. But few workers are equipped with the skills needed to evaluate the costs and benefits of complex retirement saving or health care programs. For that reason ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, requires disclosure...

On the Optimal Combination of Annuities and Tontines

By An Chen, Manuel Rach, Thorsten Sehner Tontines, retirement products constructed in such a way that the longevity risk is shared in a pool of policyholders, have recently gained vast attention from researchers and practitioners. Typically, these products are cheaper than annuities, but do not provide stable payments to policyholders. This raises the question whether, from the policyholders' viewpoint, the advantages of annuities and tontines can be combined to form a retirement plan which is cheaper than an annuity...

Gender Gap in Savings Goal Choice: Evidence from Mixed Methods

Ariane Hillig, Jerome Monne, Janette Rutterford, Dimitris Sotiropoulos There has been a good deal of research on gender psychological differences in the context of financial decision making, but no research on the impact of gender difference in the setting of savings goals. To address this question we use two unique datasets, one quantitative and one qualitative. Our quantitative results show that men set more challenging savings goals than women, even when we control for wealth, income, and portfolio risk...

Tenure Choice, Portfolio Structure and Long-Term Care – Optimal Risk Management in Retirement

By Hans Fehr, Maurice Hofmann We study the interplay between tenure decisions, stock market investment and the public social security system. Housing equity not only serves a dual purpose as a consumption good and as an asset, but also provides insurance to buffer various risks in retirement. Our life cycle model captures these links in order to explain why homeownership in Germany is so low. Our simulation results indicate that the public long-term care as well as the pension...

The Political Economy of Social Security Reform

By Michael Boskin, Diego Perez, Daniel Bennett We identify which types of Social Security reforms are supported when people vote in their financial self-interest, under alternative economic and demographic projections and voting proclivity assumptions. While 40% of voters have negative lifetime net transfers, less than 10% have negative future transfers under the unsustainable status quo. Framing the problem as a choice between reforms is necessary for any to receive majority support. Delayed reforms are often preferred, but immediate tax...

The False Promise of Portman-Cardin Pension Reform

By Michael Doran This article analyzes the pension-reform bill introduced in 2019 by Senator Portman and Senator Cardin. Earlier Portman-Cardin bills, enacted in 1996, 2001, and 2006, substantially increased the amounts that higher-income families can save in tax-qualified retirement plans and IRAs, but they included only modest and mostly ineffective measures to encourage retirement savings by lower- and middle-income families. Despite the tens of billions of dollars in tax subsidies spent under the earlier Portman-Cardin legislation, retirement-account values today...

Informality and the Challenge of Pension Adequacy: Outlook and Reform Options for Peru

By Christoph Freudenberg, Frederik Toscani Past reforms have put the Peruvian pension system on a largely fiscally sustainable path, but the system faces important challenges in providing adequate pension levels for a large share of the population. Using administrative microdata at the affiliate level, we project replacement rates in the defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) pillars over the next 30 years and simulate the impact of various reform scenarios on the average level and distribution of pensions. In...

Multiemployer plans: evaluating a proposal to spread the pain

By Alicia Munnell, Jean- Pierre Aubry, Wenliang, Hou, Anthony Webb The Multiemployer Pension Reform Act (MPRA) allows multiemployer plans facing insolvency to apply for approval from the Treasury to cut accrued benefits of plan members to prolong plan solvency—a departure from the benefit protections of Employee Retirement Income Security Act. To assess the law's impact, this paper models Central States Teamsters – by far the largest – plan to have applied under the new law to reduce benefits. Using...