July 2022

US. Milliman: Public pension plans’ funding dips slightly in May

The estimated funding ratio of the 100 largest public defined benefit plans in the U.S. inched down to 78.4% at the end of May from 78.6% at the end of April, according to the latest Milliman 100 Public Pension Funding index released Wednesday. The "relatively stagnant market" of May provided a "reprieve" for these plans after the volatility experienced between February and April this year, Milliman said in a news release. The funding ratio was as high as 85.5% at...

Japan. World’s Top Pension Fund Writes Off Russia Stocks, Sells Bonds and Closes Year With Gains

Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund said Friday that it’s been selling Russian assets since March following the invasion of Ukraine, marking down some values to almost zero in the process. The world’s biggest pension fund has substantially reduced holdings of Russian bonds, which can still be traded over-the-counter. The fund has been largely stuck with the country’s stocks, as foreign investors face trading restrictions, Chief Investment Officer Eiji Ueda said in the GPIF annual report. The Government Pension Investment Fund lost...

June 2022

A Multi-State Model for Sick Leave and Its Impact on Partial Early Retirement Incentives: The Case of the Netherlands

By Sophie de Mol van Otterloo & Jennifer Alonso-García We investigate the effect of part time and full time work on health using a Markov framework and generalized linear models to smooth the resulting crude rates. The Chapman-Kolmogorov equations are used for a general solution. We apply this model to assess a partial early retirement incentive in the Netherlands, known as "the generation pact''. The smoothed rates imply that working part time does not necessarily mean a better health for...

Spillover Effects of Old-Age Pension Across Generations: Family Labor Supply and Child Outcomes

By Katja Kaufmann, Yasemin Özdemir & Han Ye We study the impact of grandparental retirement decisions on family members' labor supply and child outcomes by exploiting a Dutch pension reform in a fuzzy Regression Discontinuity design. A one-hour increase in grandmothers' hours worked causes adult daughters with young children to work half an hour less. Daughters without children, with older children and sons/daughters-in-law are not affected. We show important long-run impacts on maternal labor supply and on the child penalty....

Does Informality Hold the Key to Growth and Stability?

By Meghna Dutta This paper attempts to analyse the impact of a prevailing informal sector on the dynamics of growth and inflation in developing economies. The high growth rates posited by most developing economies in the presence of a huge informal sector suggest that this sector might not be the malefactor as often indicated. The main results show that the informal economy not only contributes to economic growth but the firms also help to significantly reduce inflation by generating employment...

México. Con las minusvalías vemos el panorama con precaución, pero de manera optimista: Consar

La minusvalía es una imagen de un momento y que a lo largo de los todos los años del Sistema del Ahorro para el Retiro (SAR) ha habido meses rojos, sin embargo al final de cada año los resultados han sido positivos, aseguró Iván Pliego Moreno, presidente de la Comisión Nacional del Sistema del Ahorro para el Retiro (Consar), en el marco del vigésimo quinto aniversario de la entrada en vigor del SAR. "Normalmente las minusvalías que se registran en...

DC 2.0: Three Paths To More Equitable Retirement Programs

Among C-suite and financial executives at both for-profit and nonprofit organizations, 99% are committed to helping employees save for retirement and 84% believe they have made significant progress toward achieving their organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals. That’s according to a December 2021 PNC Survey on institutional social responsibility. Despite these commitments, many employees remain underprepared for retirement. Specifically, low-income workers, women, and people of color tend to have significantly less access to retirement plans, and when these groups...

South Korea’s pension fund carried out rare FX hedging this month

South Korea's National Pension Service sold a small amount of dollars on the forward market this month in its first foreign exchange hedging since early 2020, an official at the agency told Reuters on Thursday. The official, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, did not disclose any more details such as the timing of the sale and amounts involved. The agency held a combined 312.3 trillion won ($240.21 billion) worth of foreign stocks and bonds...

Boletín Técnico de la GEIH. Medición de empleo informal y seguridad social. Trimestre móvil Feb – Abr 2022

Por DANE La Gran Encuesta Integrada de Hogares (GEIH) tiene como objetivo principal proporcionar información básica sobre el tamaño y estructura de la fuerza de trabajo del país (empleo, desempleo e inactividad), así como de las características sociodemográficas que permiten caracterizar a la población según sexo, edad, parentesco con el jefe del hogar, nivel educativo, la afiliación al sistema de seguridad social en salud, entre otros. Igualmente, a través de la encuesta se clasifica a las personas según su fuerza de...

US. Social Security is valuable and needs attention sooner rather than later

This program has demonstrated its worth in tumultuous times The 2022 Social Security Trustees Report, which was prepared in February when the outlook for the economy looked less uncertain, shows a slight decrease in the program's 75-year deficit from 3.54% to 3.42% of taxable payroll (see Figure 1). The depletion date for the trust fund bounced back from 2034 to 2035. What does a deficit of 3.42% of taxable payrolls mean? That figure means that if payroll taxes were raised immediately...