July 2026
24Jul

When States Break Promises: Informal Insurance Responses to Pension Reform

By Alina Malkova When governments expand pension systems, families reduce intergenerational transfers. This paper tests the reverse: do families substitute back toward informal insurance when governments renege on pension promises? I study Russia’s 2014 funded pension freeze, which eliminated future contributions for workers born after 1967, using RLMS panel data (2010–2023) and a cohort difference-in-differences design. Affected households increased financial transfers to adult children by 3.5 percentage points under a conservative age×year fixed effects specification and by 6.5 percentage points...

July 24, 2026
Articles, System Characterization, ,
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24Jul

Retirement at Risk: The Political Economy of Public Pension Governance

By Allen Mendenhall & Dan Sutter State public pension systems manage over $6 trillion in assets while facing approximately $1.3 trillion in unfunded liabilities, raising fundamental questions about governance effectiveness and fiduciary accountability. This Article examines these challenges through the analytical framework of governance, applying insights from public choice, principal-agent models, and corporate governance to argue that details in implementation significantly impact outcomes. We offer Ohio's State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) as a case study. Recent governance reforms in Ohio-including...

July 24, 2026
Articles, Pension Management, , ,
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17Jul

Mapped: The Share of Seniors in Every U.S. State

By Dorothy Neufeld America’s population is aging, but the trend looks very different from one state to the next. Using the latest U.S. Census Bureau data via USAFacts, this map shows the share of residents aged 65 and older in every state. These differences have growing implications for healthcare, housing, public services, and the workforce. The Northeast is home to many of the states with the highest shares of seniors. Maine (23.5%), Vermont (22.9%), Delaware (21.7%), and New Hampshire (21.5%) all rank near...

July 17, 2026
Aging, Articles, ,
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17Jul

Extending Pension Coverage to the Informal Sector in Africa

By Melis Guven  The coverage of pension systems in the Africa region is limited to the small segment of the population in the formal sector. Coverage is thin partly because traditional contributory pension schemes are not responding to the needs of the informal sector. As a result, a large share of the region’s adult population has no access to contributory pension schemes during their working lives. This means they will not be eligible for a pension. It also means the...

July 17, 2026
Articles, Pension design, , ,
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17Jul

Malnutrition in Older Adults: The Hidden Threat to Healthy Longevity

By Janet Helm  When you think about malnutrition, you may picture famine or starving children in developing countries. But in the United States and across the globe, malnutrition among older adults is a quiet epidemic hiding in plain sight. A comprehensive meta-analysis of 98 studies found that about one in five older adults worldwide is malnourished, and in the Americas specifically, that number climbs to more than 20%. The more rigorous Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition criteria, which are now endorsed...

July 17, 2026
Aging, Articles, , , ,
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10Jul

The Impact of a Rising State Pension Age Policy on Women’s Well-Being and Health Using Longitudinal Data from the UK

By Louis Compton, Magdalena Walbaum, David R. Sinclair, Gemma Spiers, Barbara Hanratty, Raphael Wittenberg Background: The UK aimed to prolong the working lives of women by introduced a policy raising women’s state pension age (SPA) from 60 to 66. The impact of involuntary prolonged employment on individual’s health and well-being is debated. We explore how the well-being, mental and physical health of the women impacted by the policy has been affected. Methods: We used data from the first 12-waves of the...

July 10, 2026
Aging, Articles, , , , ,
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10Jul

The China Imbalance Residual: A Demographic Decomposition

By Brian Peters The Chinese current-account surplus has averaged approximately 2 percent of GDP since 2015, declining from a 2007 peak near 10 percent yet remaining far above what its income level and demographic structure would predict in a global panel. We estimate this gap as the residual against the income-conditional demographic baseline fitted on 140 countries with China held out. The residual averages +5 to +12 percentage points of GDP across four sub-periods of 2000-2024, peaks at +14.3 pp...

July 10, 2026
Articles, Savings, ,
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10Jul

Optimizing Retirement Financial Strategies: Integrating Annuities, Defined Contribution Plans, and Long-Term Care Costs

By Vanya Horneff, Raimond Maurer, Olivia S. Mitchell, Julius Odenbreit Nursing home costs in the United States now exceed $100,000 per year, and government assistance programs such as Medicaid help out only when retirees are largely destitute. Moreover, health shocks driving the need for such care can arise suddenly in old age, are frequently permanent in nature, and can be associated with declining mental and physical abilities. These facts raise the important question of how households can best prepare to...

July 10, 2026
Articles, Savings, , , , ,
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03Jul

How Rational Is AI Investment Advice? Risk-Return Relevance in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Investments

By Nanying Lin, Oscar Gilbert & Tianxiang Chu Textbook finance theories indicate that investors demand risk premia from risky assets as compensation for risk and for hedging against future unfavorable economic states. We design a comprehensive study to examine whether investment advice generated by artificial intelligence (AI) reflects a coherent risk–return pattern in investment decision-making. We find that AI advises investors to increase stock investments when return increases and reduce stock allocations when stock volatility increases. However, AI ignores the...

July 3, 2026
Articles, Investment, , , ,
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03Jul

Pension Income and Post-Retirement Labor Supply

By Fabian Kindermann, Carla Krolage, Sebastian Kunz, Manuel Pannier & Karoline Ströhlein This paper provides causal evidence on how pension income affects labor supply after retirement. We exploit the introduction of the German Earned Income Pension Credit (Grundrente), which permanently increased pension income for retirees with long contribution histories and comparatively low lifetime earnings. The reform generates exogenous variation in non-labor income without creating additional labor supply distortions, allowing us to isolate pure income effects. Using administrative data covering the...

July 3, 2026
Adequacy, Articles, Labor Market, , , ,
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