August 2019

30Aug

Using Vignettes to Improve Understanding of Social Security and Annuities

By Anya Samek, Arie Kapteyn, Andre Gray Evidence shows that people have difficulty understanding complex aspects of retirement planning, which leads them to under-utilize annuities and claim Social Security benefits earlier than is optimal. To target this problem, we developed vignettes about the consequences of different annuitization and claiming decisions. We evaluated our vignettes using an experiment with a representative online panel of nearly 2,000 Americans. In our experiment, respondents were either assigned to a control group with no...

August 30, 2019
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30Aug

Why is Inequality Higher Among the Old? Evidence from China

By Katja Hanewald, Ruo Jia, Zining Liu This paper studies income inequality in old age and its development over the life cycle. We develop a theoretical framework and a new empirical method to show that income is more unequally distributed in old age than in working age. We combine the regression-based inequality decomposition method and the three-step mediating effect test to analyze the transmission of income inequality from initial socioeconomic differences to income inequality in old age. Our study...

August 30, 2019
Adequacy, Aging, Articles, Pension design, , , , ,
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23Aug

Towards Implementing Inclusive Authentication Technologies for Older Adults

By Sanchari Das, Andrew Kim, Ben Jelen, Joshua Streiff, L. Jean Camp, Lesa Huber Two-factor authentication (2FA) provides protection for on-line accounts through efficient and highly robust access control. Adoption and usability, however, remain challenging for such security tools and technologies. Most current research on 2FA focuses on convenience samples of experts in the technology sector while neglecting non-experts. As older adults increasingly use everyday digital technologies, providing convenient means for them to protect their online data has become...

August 23, 2019
Aging, Articles,
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23Aug

Bridging Public Pension Funds and Infrastructure Investing

By Clive Lipshitz, Ingo Walter Underfunding of U.S. public pensions is a chronic policy issue that has become more severe over time. Public pension obligations were estimated at $5.96 trillion at the end of 2017 supported by assets of $4.33 trillion — a shortfall of $1.63 trillion and a ‘funded-ratio’ of 72.6%. We consider the sustainability of public pension systems in the face of changing demographics and frequently inadequate funding and investment returns, and make the connection to the...

August 23, 2019
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23Aug

The Effects of Increasing the Eligibility Age for Public Pension on Individual Labor Supply: Evidence from Japan

By Nobuhiko Nakazawa This paper investigates the effects of increasing the eligibility age for public pension on workers' retirement decisions, focusing on recent Japanese public pension reforms. In Japan, the pensionable age for Employees' Pension Insurance benefits gradually increased from 60 to 65 for males over the course of a decade. Using individual-level administrative data and a regression discontinuity design, I find that raising the pensionable age for flat-rate benefits by one year increases male employment at the critical...

August 23, 2019
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, System Sustainability, ,
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16Aug

Performance and Challenges of the Income Protection System for Older People in Ecuador

By Ignacio Raul Apella The purpose of this work is to analyze the performance of the Ecuadorian pension system, its challenges, and available policy options. Therefore, the study analyzes coverage, financing sufficiency, and sustainability indicators that were created based on information from the Encuesta Nacional de Empleo, Desempleo y Subempleo (National Employment, Unemployment and Underemployment Survey) that was carried out over 2003-16. Likewise, actuarial simulations are made by using the World Bank pension reform options simulation toolkit. The findings...

August 16, 2019
Aging, Articles, System Sustainability, , ,
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16Aug

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...

August 16, 2019
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16Aug

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...

August 16, 2019
Articles, Regulation, Slider-Left, , , , , ,
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09Aug

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...

August 9, 2019
Adequacy, Articles, Pension design, Regulation,
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09Aug

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...

August 9, 2019
Articles, Investing,
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