July 2017

A Study on the Prospects and Problems of Unorganised Labours in India

By Ravindra B.K. (Alliance University), Pradeep M. D. & T. Ramjani Sab (Srinivas Institute of Management Studies) India comprises 43.7 crore people working with the skill in the residual sector as unorganized labours. Around 24.6 core engage in agriculture, 4.4 crore in construction and remaining people in the manufacturing and service sectors. This sector faces eventual deficiencies in regulations over employment, remuneration pattern, poor employer and employee relationship and casual work culture. Informal sector covers large number of workers from...

Problems and demographic policies in Europe. The Role of Cities

By Gérard-François Dumont (University of Paris 4 Sorbonne) Demographic changes are often unknown because they are part of long-term logics; Yet the future of European societies is in the civil states of its various countries. In the first part, we must first analyze the general demographic changes, in particular with regard to the natural increase in Europe, and then the changes in the geography of the population linked to changes in urbanization. Knowledge of the facts will then allow us...

Income and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Singapore's First National Non-Contributory Pension

By Yanying Chen & Yi Jin Tan (Singapore Management University) Using a new monthly longitudinal survey of elderly Singaporeans, we precisely time and study the announcement and disbursement effects of an exogeneous permanent income shock on a broad range of subjective well-being domains. The source of this permanent income shock is a new means-tested non-contributory pension, the Silver Support Scheme (SSS). Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that pension recipients experienced improved life satisfaction upon announcement of the SSS; this...

Income and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Singapore’s First National Non-Contributory Pension

By Yanying Chen & Yi Jin Tan (Singapore Management University) Using a new monthly longitudinal survey of elderly Singaporeans, we precisely time and study the announcement and disbursement effects of an exogeneous permanent income shock on a broad range of subjective well-being domains. The source of this permanent income shock is a new means-tested non-contributory pension, the Silver Support Scheme (SSS). Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that pension recipients experienced improved life satisfaction upon announcement of the SSS; this...

June 2017

The Causal Effect of Retirement on Health Services Utilization: Evidence from Urban Vietnam

By Thang Dang (University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City) Access to medical services is significantly essential for retaining and improving health status for aging population. Whilst retired individuals tend to have more time for the use of health services, there is only inadequate evidence evaluating the causal effect of retirement on health services utilization. To fulfill this gap in the literature especially from developing countries, this paper estimates the causal effect of retirement on the probability and the frequency...

Long-Term Effects of Extended Unemployment Benefits for Older Workers

By Tomi Kyyrä & Hanna Pesola (VATT Institute for Economic Research) This paper examines the long-term effects of extended unemployment benefits that older unemployed can collect until retirement in Finland. We consider a reform that increased the age threshold of this scheme from 55 to 57 for people born in 1950 or later. Our regression discontinuity estimates show that postponing eligibility by two years increased employment over the remaining working career by seven months. Despite the corresponding reduction in unemployment,...

What Rates of Productivity Growth Would Be Required to Offset the Effects of Population Aging? A Study of Twenty Industrialised Countries

By Frank T. Denton & Byron G. Spencer (McMaster University) A shift in population distribution toward older ages is underway in industrialised countries throughout the world and will continue well into the future. We provide a framework for isolating the pure effects of population aging on per capita GDP, employ the framework in calculations for twenty OECD countries, and derive the rates of productivity growth required to offset those effects. We consider also some labour-related changes that might provide offsets,...

Pensions: What Solidarity between Generations?

By Gérard-François Dumont (University of Paris 4 Sorbonne) To understand the fact that solidarity between generations is essential for pensions, Gérard-François Dumont presents a parable inspired by the story of Robinson Crusoe. It shows that it is always the case that assets reduce their purchasing power to release payments to pensioners, whether they are in a distribution or capitalization system. According to the author, "capitalization is a system of financial distribution; Distribution is a system of human capitalization". (more…)

We’ll Live to 100 – How Can We Afford It?

The challenges we face to provide our ageing societies with a financially secure retirement are well-known. In most countries around the world, standards of living and healthcare advancements are allowing people to live longer. This should be celebrated, but we should also consider the implications for the financial systems that have been designed to meet our retirement needs, which in many countries are already under severe strain. This report has been produced as part of the Forum’s Retirement Investment Systems...

Modeling Multi-State Health Transitions in China: A Generalized Linear Model with Time Trends

By Katja Hanewald, Han Li & Adam Wenqiang Shao (University of New South Wales) Rapid population aging in China has urged the need to understand health transitions of older Chinese to assist the development of social security programs and financial products aimed at funding long-term care. In this paper, we develop a new flexible approach to modeling health transitions in a multi-state Markov model that allows for age effects, time trends and age-time interactions. The model is implemented in the...