February 2024
21Feb

Social Spending in Mexico: Needs, Priorities and Reforms

By Swarnali A Hannan, Juan Pablo Cuesta Aguirre & David Bartolini Poverty in Mexico was high before the COVID-19 pandemic and has been exacerbated by the pandemic, with significant variation across states. Education losses from the pandemic are likely to be large and worsen pre-existing disparities; unless mitigated soon, they could contribute to heightened scarring over the medium term. Using state-level and cross-country comparisons, this paper reviews key social programs as well as priorities in education and health. It finds that...

February 21, 2024
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16Feb

What could effective pensions engagement look like?

By Pensions Policy Institute This report, kindly sponsored by Standard Life, builds on the findings of the Briefing Note 136 - What is the role of engagement in pensions?, sets out the broad range of factors that can impact the level of engagement that can feasibly be achieved, the benefits and risks associated with engagement and the ways in which engagement strategies could be strengthened, including what other support may be needed for those who are less likely to become...

February 16, 2024
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16Feb

Gender Inequality Over the Life Cycle, Information Provision and Policy Preferences

By Alessandra Casarico, Jana Schuetz & Silke Uebelmesser We conduct a survey experiment with four thousand German respondents and provide information on two measures of gender inequality, separately or jointly: the gender gap in earnings and the gender gap in pensions. We analyze the effect of information provision on respondents’ views on the importance of reducing gender inequality and on their agreement with the adoption of policies targeted at different stages of the life cycle and aimed at reducing the...

February 16, 2024
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02Feb

Home Equity and Retirement Funding: Challenges and Opportunities

By Vishaal Baulkaran & Pawan Jain We investigate the use of home equity to address the retirement saving crisis and funding shortfall. Using survey data from consumers and financial planners, we examine Canadian consumers’ views on equity release and gauge financial planners’ knowledge, attitudes, and perspectives toward recommending equity release products to their clients. Our findings indicate that a primary barrier for consumers is their lack of understanding about home equity release schemes. However, when these schemes are more cost-effective...

February 2, 2024
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02Feb

Gender Inequality Over the Life Cycle, Information Provision and Policy Preferences

By Alessandra Casarico, Jana Schuetz & Silke Uebelmesser We conduct a survey experiment with four thousand German respondents and provide information on two measures of gender inequality, separately or jointly: the gender gap in earnings and the gender gap in pensions. We analyze the effect of information provision on respondents’ views on the importance of reducing gender inequality and on their agreement with the adoption of policies targeted at different stages of the life cycle and aimed at reducing the...

February 2, 2024
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January 2024
26Jan

Planning for a pension scheme buyout

By Katherine Russell, Melissa Wongand & Alice Fletcher The bulk annuity market has seen an increase in full scheme buy-ins, which is a significant milestone for any pension scheme. However, there are still lots to do before the buy-in is converted to a buyout and the pension scheme can be wound up. Katherine Russell, Melissa Wong and Alice Fletcher highlight the key steps and considerations following a full scheme buy-in. Get the report here

January 26, 2024
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26Jan

Collective Defined Contribution Pension with Stochastic Age-structured Models

By Fan Zhang We have reconfigured the Age-structured Model(ASM) model, leveraging its mathematical underpinnings rooted in cohort dynamics. This paper applies the novel ASM framework to the issue of Collective Defined Contribution Pension(CDC) pensions, providing a profound characterization of population dynamics and asset fluctuations at each time-age point within the pension context. This serves to substantiate the novel ASM framework as the key mathematical model for addressing CDC-related challenges. Furthermore, we have illustrated the distinct advantages of ASM through this...

January 26, 2024
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December 2023
15Dec

Retirement Trajectories and Social Security’s Retirement Earnings Test

By Bob Joondeph Chair, Nancy J. Altman, Jagadeesh Gokhale & Amy Shuart Social Security’s retirement earnings test (RET) temporarily withholds or reduces the Social Security benefits of people below full retirement age (FRA) who work and earn above a certain threshold while collecting retirement benefits. Those benefits are increased at FRA to account for the months when benefits were withheld or reduced under the RET. The legislative intent of the RET, which has been part of the law since Social...

December 15, 2023
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15Dec

Innovative Combo Product Design Embedding Variable Annuity and Long-Term Care Insurance Contracts

By Yang Shen, Michael Sherris, Yawei Wang & Jonathan Ziveyi This paper presents a novel combo insurance product design consisting of a variable annuity contract embedded with guaranteed minimum income benefits and long-term care insurance. This combo product provides enhanced benefits when the policyholder is functionally disabled. The Hamiltonian Monte Carlo simulation technique is utilised for numerically valuing the combo product whose underlying fund is proportionally invested in multiple asset classes. Product features including the elimination period and the maximum...

December 15, 2023
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15Dec

The Shift that Redefined Retirement Security

By Shashwat Vidhu Sher Retirement plans have been a standard feature of public and private sector employers in the United States since the early 1900s. Although Defined Benefit plans were the mainstay of most pensions plans for much of the twentieth century, there was a massive shift in the 1980s, mainly in the private sector, towards Defined Contribution plans like 401(k). The paper argues that government policies for the private sector, new employer-employee relationship, job-switching, and familiarity with the financial...

December 15, 2023
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