By Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F. Katz Today, more American women than ever before stay in the workforce into their sixties and seventies. This trend emerged in the 1980s, and has persisted during the past three decades, despite substantial changes in macroeconomic conditions. Why is this so? Today’s older American women work full-time jobs at greater rates than women in other developed countries. In Women Working Longer, editors...
By Jacob Goldin, Tatiana Homonoff, Richard W. Patterson, William L. Skimmyhorn Deciding how much to save for retirement can be complicated. Drawing on a field experiment conducted with the Department of Defense, we study whether such complexity depresses participation in an employer-sponsored retirement saving plan. We find that simplifying one dimension of the enrollment decision, by highlighting a potential rate at which non-participants might contribute, increases participation in the plan. Similar communications that did not include a highlighted rate...
By Peilin Yang China is facing a series of significant debt problems. We have studied the changes in debt and benefits under different policy instruments under the framework of large-scale OLG. Under the three retirement ages, as the retirement age increases, the maximum increase in benefits is 17.98%, and the debt is 75.69%. Under the five tax rates, the optimal tax rate is 28%, the maximum increase in benefits is 22.65%, and the maximum debt ratio is 75%. Source:...
By Jonathan Gruber, Ohto Kanninen, Terhi Ravaska Focal retirement ages are a central feature of Social Security programs around the world, and provide a potentially powerful tool for policy makers who are interested in reforming retirement systems to address the growing funding shortfalls. But these tools often come hand in hand with significant changes in the financial structure of Social Security that can have independent, and potentially deleterious, impacts on retirees. In this paper, we use a major reformulation...
By Devon Gorry, Kyung Min Lee, Sita Slavov We investigate the impact of more generous terms for delaying state pensions on claiming and labor supply in the United Kingdom using a 2005 policy change. First, we find that the more generous delay terms reduced the fraction of males receiving pensions at the earliest eligibility age and shortly after. While there are also post-policy changes in women’s claiming behavior, further investigation reveals that these changes do not coincide with the...
By David P. Blake This paper examines the financial system prerequisites needed for the successful delivery of funded private pensions. In particular, it examines the financial instruments and investment strategies required during both the accumulation and decumulation stages. It does so within the context of a specific developed economy with a mature pension system, namely the United Kingdom. The lessons learned can help to inform the debate in developing countries that are in the process of undertaking pension reform....
By David A Wise, Courtney C Coile, Kevin Milligan Even as life expectancy in many countries has continued to increase, social security and similar government programs can provide strong incentives for workers to leave the labor force when they reach the age of eligibility for benefits. Disability insurance programs can also play a significant role in the departure of older workers from the labor force, with many individuals in some countries relying on disability insurance until they are able...
By Ratna Sahay, Ulric Eriksson von Allmen, Amina Lahreche, Purva Khera, Sumiko Ogawa, Majid Bazarbash, Kimberly Beaton Technology is changing the landscape of the financial sector, increasing access to financial services in profound ways. These changes have been in motion for several years, affecting nearly all countries in the world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, technology has created new opportunities for digital financial services to accelerate and enhance financial inclusion, amid social distancing and containment measures. At the same time, the...
By Warren Cormier, DCIIA, Nick Maynard & Sylvia Brown In the months since the outbreak of COVID-19, the pandemic has continued to expose and exacerbate cracks in people’s financial lives. In our latest research, Commonwealth partnered with the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association’s (DCIIA) Retirement Research Center on a series of surveys to better understand how low- to moderate-income (“LMI”) plan participants are handling their retirement savings during the pandemic and the impact to their financial security. ...
By: Debbie Harrison, Alistair Byrne, David P. Blake. The report shows that pension providers and advisers are finding it increasingly uneconomic to market to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and are withdrawing rather than redoubling their efforts. This is an important and difficult issue for both government and private sector providers. SOURCE: @SSRN
