November 2020

Building Better Retirement Systems in the Wake of the Global Pandemic

By Olivia S. Mitchell In the wake of the global pandemic known as COVID-19, retirees, along with those hoping to retire someday, have been shocked into a new awareness of the need for better risk management tools to handle longevity and aging. This paper offers an assessment of the status quo prior to the spread of the coronavirus, evaluates how retirement systems are faring in the wake of the shock. Next we examine insurance and financial market products that may...

South Africa. The scary facts about the gender pension gap

Echoing concerns raised by the World Economic Forum earlier this year, 10X Investments’ new South African Retirement Reality Report adds more data showing this worrying trend of women falling further behind men. 10X’s third annual Retirement Reality Report (RRR20) shows that the retirement savings gap between the genders has grown in the last year, not only because the gender pay gap has widened, but because many women continue to reject the best option they have for narrowing the gap,...

Pension Schemes in the European Union: Challenges and Implications from Macroeconomic and Financial Stability Perspectives

By Antonio Sánchez Serrano,Tuomas Peltonen Pension schemes have a significant influence on the saving and consumption decisions of households. Similarly, contributions to pension arrangements are substantial expenditures for national governments and also for corporations, depending on the prevailing pension system. Beyond this, pension schemes play an important role in the economy, channelling savings into investments through capital markets. However, demographic factors and the macroeconomic environment (low interest rates, low growth and low productivity) are raising concerns about the sustainability...

Social Insurance, Demographics, and Rural-Urban Migration in China

By Neha Bairoliya, Ray Miller We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model to analyze the impact of social insurance policy and demographic changes on rural-urban migration in China. Quantitative analyses indicate that different social insurance programs not only have differential effects on net migration flows but also on the age and income distribution of migrants. Enrolling migrants in urban pensions discourages rural-urban migration at young ages and reverse migration in old-age. In contrast, urban health insurance incentivizes rural-urban migration...

October 2020

Pension Reform in Mexico: Guiding Principles for Creating a Sustainable and Balanced System for Private Sector Workers

By Guillermo Zamarripa & Gustavo A. Del Angel From 1995 to 1997, Mexico engaged in a major pension reform. With that change, the system migrated from a pay as you go defined benefit model to a defined contribution one. The pension system reform permitted a sustained increase of financial savings in Mexico from 1999 to 2019. Savings managed by the pension funds -the Afores1- reached 16.6% of GDP as of the end of 2019. However, after more than two...

The Changing Nature of Work and Public Pension Coverage: Evidence from the US and Europe

By Axel H. Börsch-Supan, Courtney Coile, Jonathan Cribb, Carl Emmerson and Yuri Pettinicchi We examine non-standard work and its impact on pension coverage via a case study of the US, the UK, and Germany. We find that the share of workers engaged in non-standard work has changed only modestly over time in these three countries, despite the popular perception that a more significant transformation in the nature of work may be underway. We discuss how non-standard work may affect...

The Changing Nature of Work and Public Pension Coverage: Evidence from the US and Europe

By Axel H. Börsch-Supan, Courtney Coile, Jonathan Cribb, Carl Emmerson, Yuri Pettinicchi We examine non-standard work and its impact on pension coverage via a case study of the US, the UK, and Germany. We find that the share of workers engaged in non-standard work has changed only modestly over time in these three countries, despite the popular perception that a more significant transformation in the nature of work may be underway. We discuss how non-standard work may affect public...

Govt seeks to overturn Pension Schemes Bill amendment defeats

The government is seeking to overturn the four Pension Schemes Bill amendment votes it lost in the House of Lords in the summer by removing them from the bill. In a House of Commons Notices of Amendments publication, Pensions Minster, Guy Opperman, outlined the removal of the House of Lords’ amendments. The amendments relate to commercial pensions dashboards, transaction facilities on dashboards, reporting on fairness to members of collective defined contribution (CDC) schemes, and open defined benefit (DB) schemes...

The Unequal Burden of Retirement Reform: Evidence from Australia

By Todd Morris As governments try to contain rising expenditure on retirement pensions by increasing eligibility ages, there are concerns that such reforms disproportionately affect poorer households. Using detailed longitudinal data, I examine this trade-off in the context of an Australian reform that increased women’s pension-eligibility age from 60 to 65. While this reform led to significant reductions in net government expenditure, the negative effects on household incomes were concentrated among poorer households. These unequal impacts meant that,...

New Finance: In Search for Analytical Framework

By Jan Monkiewicz Since the beginning of the century, modern financial systems have been experiencing a period of dynamic change. These changes have caused the uniform fabric on which the systems were based for a long time to become eroded and a multitude of alternative solutions to appear in their place. The existing systems are becoming increasingly heterogeneous and increasingly less transparent. In addition to the traditional financial system based on highly regulated financial intermediaries with a legal monopoly,...