March 2019

17Mar

Defined Contribution Pension Plans: Who Has Seen the Risk?

By Peter Forsyth (University of Waterloo - David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science) & Kenneth R. Vetzal (University of Waterloo) The trend towards eliminating defined benefit (DB) pension plans in favor of defined contribution (DC) plans implies that increasing numbers of pension plan participants will bear the risk that final realized portfolio values may be insufficient to fund desired retirement cash flows. We compare the outcomes of various asset allocation strategies for a typical DC plan investor. The strategies...

March 17, 2019
Articles, Pension design, , ,
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17Mar

Population Aging, Health Care, and Fiscal Policy Reform: The Challenges for Japan

By Minchung Hsu (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS)) & Tomoaki Yamada (Meiji University - School of Commerce) We construct a transition analysis based on a general equilibrium life‐cycle model to investigate the effects of aging, and we evaluate various policy alternatives designed to lessen the negative influence of aging. In particular, we analyze reforms of insurance benefits and tax financing tools that were recently the focus of a great amount of attention and debate in Japan because of...

March 17, 2019
Aging, Articles, Slider-Left, , ,
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10Mar

Retirement Challenge – A Perspective for Emerging Markets

By Nadeem Jeddy (Independent) The West offers valuable lessons in managing retirement challenge but their experience needs to be contextualized for a vastly different sociopolitical environment of the emerging markets. This has important implications for aggregating retirement pools to build scale, investment model of firms, boundary for public sector role and solutions for income security. The article describes the differences in sociopolitical context, reviews some important Western lessons and then proceeds to outline the key features of a sustainable retirement...

March 10, 2019
Articles, Investing,
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10Mar

Working while Studying: Employment Premium or Penalty for Youth in Benin?

By Senakpon F. A. Dedehouanou (KU Leuven), Luca Tiberti (Université Laval), Hilaire Houeninvo (University of Abomey-Calavi), Djohodo Inès Monwanou (National University of Agriculture (Benin)) Most youth in developing countries leave school with only a general academic education level, slowing down their transition to the labor market. We analyze whether work experience during school can help youth transition more easily to a first job in Benin. We used data from the 2014 School-to-Work Transition Survey (SWTS) and a multi-equation model to...

March 10, 2019
Articles, Labor Market, , ,
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10Mar

Reforming Social Security: The Challenge of Income Inequality

By David W. Rasmussen (Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy) Objective: This article examines the role Social Security plays in alleviating poverty among retirees in the context of threats to its solvency.  Method: Examining long-term employment trends, declining access to defined benefit pensions and saving behavior can determine if in the more future Social Security beneficiaries are likely to be poor.  Results: Labor market trends driven by technical change, global competition and increasing demand for services indicate that more future retirees...

March 10, 2019
Articles, Labor Market, Regulation, , ,
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07Mar

Reversing Pension Privatization

From 1981 to 2014, thirty countries fully or partially privatized their social security public mandatory pensions (figure 1). Fourteen countries were in Latin America: Chile (first to privatize in 1981), Peru (1993), Argentina and Colombia (1994), Uruguay (1996), the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Mexico and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (1997), El Salvador (1998), Nicaragua (2000), Costa Rica and Ecuador (2001), Dominican Republic (2003) and Panama (2008). Another fourteen countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union embarked...

March 7, 2019
Articles, Regulation, , , ,
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03Mar

The Costs and Benefits of Caring: Aggregate Burdens of an Aging Population

By Finn Kydland (Carnegie Mellon University - David A. Tepper School of Business; Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) - Department of Economics), Nick Pretnar (Carnegie Mellon University) Throughout the 21st century, population aging in the United States will lead to increases in the number of elderly people requiring some form of living assistance which, as some argue, is to be seen as a burden on society, straining old-age insurance systems and requiring younger agents to devote an increasing fraction of...

March 3, 2019
Aging, Articles, ,
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03Mar

The Effect of Noncontributory Pensions on Saving in Mexico

By Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes (San Diego State University - Department of Economics; IZA Institute of Labor Economics), Laura Juarez (Bank of Mexico), Jorge Alonso Ortiz (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) - Centro de Investigacion Económica) This paper examines the effects of noncontributory pension programs at the federal and state levels on Mexican households' saving patterns using micro data from the Mexican Income and Expenditure Survey. We find that the federal program curtails saving among households whose oldest member is either...

March 3, 2019
Articles, Pension design, ,
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03Mar

Understanding the Spatial Disparities and Vulnerability of Population Aging in China

By Yang Cheng (Beijing Normal University (BNU)), Siyao Gao (Beijing Normal University (BNU)), Shuai Li (Beijing Normal University (BNU)), Yuchao Zhang (Independent), Mark Rosenberg (Queen's University) Understanding the regional pattern of population aging in China enables rational policy making to address the challenges of inequity in social welfare and care resources among the east–central–west regions and rural–urban areas of China. This study uses census data in 2000 and 2010, and aging population ratios, annual increase rates, and spatial auto-correlation analysis...

March 3, 2019
Aging, Articles, Labor Market,
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February 2019

23Feb

Household Savings in Central Eastern and Southeastern Europe: How Do Poorer Households Save?

By Elisabeth Beckmann (Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB)) Based on a survey of households in 10 Central Eastern European and Western Balkan countries, this paper presents new and unique evidence on which households have savings and how they save. The paper shows that the percentage of savers is low, and savings are frequently informal. Formal savings are dominated by bank savings, and participation in contractual and capital market savings is very low in comparison to high-income countries. Poor households are significantly less...

February 23, 2019
Articles, Labor Market, Savings, , , ,
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