April 2024

The Race/Ethnicity Gap in Retirement Plan Participation: More than Just Demographics

By David Blanchett American companies have been actively shifting away from defined benefit (DB) plans towards defined contribution (DC) plans for decades. This shift places more burden on workers to make decisions like whether to participate in the retirement plan, how much to save, and how to invest those savings. This analysis explores how participation in a workforce retirement plan varies by race and ethnicity leveraging data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) to the 2023 Current Population...

Progress and priorities: reviewing sustainability in key pension systems

Pension funds are long-term investors and their ability to generate long-term returns relies on the performance of the markets and economies in which they invest. Because sustainability factors such as climate change and biodiversity loss threaten the performance of the markets and economies on which they rely for financial returns, pension funds have a responsibility to consider whether sustainability-related risks will inhibit their ability to protect long-term value and provide an adequate pension to their members or beneficiaries. Accordingly,...

Retirement insecurity 2024 americans’ views of retirement

By Dan Doonan & Kelly Kenneally T he ground is shifting when it comes to retirement. Most Americans are experiencing increased financial pressures "I am scared to be broke." Dream. Eighty-three percent of Americans say that all workers should have a pension so they can be and low levels of retirement savings. Amid growing concerns about Americans’ retirement readiness, policymakers recently enacted measures to help address the grave savings shortfall. On the federal level, Congress passed important retirement legislation in...

Latent Cumulative Disadvantage: US Immigrants’ Reversed Economic Assimilation in Later Life

By Leafia Z Ye One of the most salient findings in research on immigration has been that immigrants experience substantial economic mobility as they accumulate more years in the host-society labor force and eventually approach earnings parity with their native-born counterparts. However, we do not know whether this progress is sustained in retirement. In this paper, I develop a framework of Latent Cumulative (Dis)advantage and hypothesize that even as immigrants are approaching parity with the native-born in terms of current...

Oportunidades y opciones para la creación de un sistema de pensiones no contributivo en Honduras

Por Manuel Delgado Chavarría  Uno de los objetivos centrales de los sistemas de pensiones es contribuir a prevenir y erradicar la pobreza en la vejez. En América Latina y el Caribe los sistemas de pensiones no contributivos han jugado un papel central en el avance hacia este objetivo. Este documento aborda el estado actual y los desafíos del sistema de pensiones en Honduras, incluidos los retos de cobertura y suficiencia de sus prestaciones. En atención a la mayoritaria proporción de...

Envejecer en el Lugar – Vejeces y Territorios con Sentido

Por Georgina Cárdenas Pérez & Gina Villagómez Valdés  Este proyecto editorial surgió después de tres años de trabajo colectivo producto de una estancia posdoctoral apoyada por Conahcyt. El tema central de la publicación es el fenómeno de envejecer en el lugar, una categoría de análisis joven en nuestros contextos, pero con mayor presencia en estudios realizados en países más envejecidos. La relevancia de establecer esta categoría como punto de partida radica en la necesidad de investigar y documentar las demandas...

Cuidados de la vejez y oferta laboral femenina en América Latina

Por Elisa Failache Mirza, Noemí Katzkowicz, Fabrizio Méndez Rivero, Cecilia Parada Larre B. & Martina Querejeta R El envejecimiento poblacional se posiciona como un importante cambio demográfico. Este trabajo analiza las características de los adultos mayores en situación de dependencia, las estrategias de cuidado y el perfil de personas cuidadoras para Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, El Salvador y Uruguay. La población en situación de dependencia fun-cional es mayoritariamente femenina y mayor de 75 años. Entre un 54 % y un 70...

Corte Constitucional endurece paso de trabajadores de fondos privados a Colpensiones

Esta es una noticia muy grave para millones de trabajadores colombianos y sus pensiones futuras. La Corte Constitucional, con la participación de tres conjueces, decidió ayer endurecer sustancialmente las condiciones para que los trabajadores que están en un fondo privado puedan trasladarse a Colpensiones. La decisión de la Corte Constitucional, que será pública en los próximos días, contradice una determinación de la Corte Suprema de Justicia que reconocía el derecho de los trabajadores para migrar del régimen privado de ahorro simple al régimen de prima media de Colpensiones. Le...

Wealth Creators or Inheritors? Unpacking the Gender Wealth Gap from Bottom to Top and Young to Old

By Eva Sierminska, Charlotte Bartels & Carsten Schroeder There is growing interest in understanding how gender influences the accumulation of wealth. While prior studies have focused on labor-related determinants, our research focuses on inheritances and gifts. Using unique data that over samples the top 1% of wealth holders in Germany, we show that the gender wealth gap is small for individuals up to age 40, then widens, and declines for those past retirement age. Transfer amounts and their timing are...

The Effects of Environmental Distress on Labor Markets: Evidence from Brazil

By Danae Hernandez-Cortes & Sophie Mathes This article documents how environmental distress affects individual-level labor market outcomes in Latin America’s largest economy. We collect data on a broad range of environmental distress events namely heat waves, floods, fires, and droughts, and combine these with uniquely rich administrative information covering the universe of formal employment in Brazil from 2003 to 2017. We find heterogeneous labor effects in response to environmental distress. We find that heat waves disrupt employment, increasing retirement rates...