May 2020

The End of Leisure and Retirement, COVID-19: Innovations, Jobs, Pensions, and Keynes: Guaranteed Income or Future Poverty and Redundancy?

By Niccolo Leo Caldararo The history of the support by society of the aged is discussed in cross cultural and historical context. Various cultural traditions are compared with the forms developed in complex societies from ancient Egypt and Greece and Rome, to China, the Aztec, Inca and Maya, to those of religious organizations, or those developed under different modern ideological systems like capitalism and communism as well as social democratic nations. It is found that the way a...

Millennials step into caregiving roles for aging parents

Millennial women already caring for aging parents or planning to do so are much more stressed about the caregiving responsibility than men, a new poll reveals. CaringAdvisor found 1 in 2 Millennials planning to care for aging parents say they want to do it. However, guilt was the biggest motivator, with about two-thirds admitting they’d feel guilty if they didn’t care for parents themselves. Women were more than two times as likely as men to be “extremely stressed” about...

April 2020

COVID-19 – an ageing world makes it harder to fight pandemics

By Andrew Scott The global fight against COVID-19 has triggered a surge of interest in the 1918 to 1920 influenza pandemic that killed more than 50 million people around the world. But while we can learn lessons from the past, we must recognise what is different this time and tailor our response accordingly. Read also US. How The Pandemic Is Making The Retirement Crisis Worse — And What To Do About It Above all, society is ageing. In 2018, for the first time in...

Africa’s demographic transition

The median age of Africans is currently 19 years. For comparison, Europe’s median age is 43 years and Asia’s 32. But this is going to change. In the coming decades the proportion of older people in some African countries will come close to rates experienced currently in industrialised countries. While this might be news to some people, it has been a long time coming. There has been a steady increase over the past 40 years in the number of...

Is quarantine like early retirement? These people think so

Shelter-in-place orders have urged most Americans to stay home, freeing hours of time otherwise spent commuting or working at an office. They’re also getting creative about how they use this time, including running around the neighborhood, learning a new language, taking long walks with their dogs and cooking more. Some Reddit users say if this is what early retirement is like, they’re ready. “I sleep in and wake up on my own every day. I watch some news/TV, take...

The Future of Pension Plans in the EU Internal Market: Coping with Trade-Offs Between Social Rights and Capital Markets

By Nazaré da Costa Cabral, Nuno Cunha Rodrigues This edited volume takes a closer look at various European pension-plan models and the recent challenges, trends and predictions related to the design of such schemes. The contributors analyse new ideas, both from national governments and European institutions, and consider current debates on topics such as the Capital Markets Union (CMU) and the so-called ‘European Pillar of Social Rights’ – calling for a new approach to social policy at the...

March 2020

Ageing populations expected to impact fiscal policies, says Moody’s

Population ageing is expected to raise the debt and financing requirements of many advanced economies in the coming decades, according to a report by Moody’s Investors Service released on March 4. In addition, a shrinking labour force and lower private domestic savings due to a growing ageing population will constrain funding for governments in those economies. The report notes that the twin pressures of shrinking labour force and lower private domestic savings will leave politically challenging fiscal consolidation,...

February 2020

Coronavirus, Global Aging & How Future Contagions May Affect Life In Retirement

The Novel Coronavirus is spreading. So is fear. Despite our alleged rational, technologically-advanced, and informed era – fear changes everything. Unfortunately, the fear factor around the current and future global contagions is likely to grow exponentially and is likely to disproportionately affect the lives and wellbeing of older people. News of the Coronavirus has spread far ahead of the contagion itself. Nearly every news source has headlined the virus. As of this writing, nearly 800 million hits can...

UK. The rising cost of care

What does the chart show? The disposable incomes of pensioners aged 65 to 74 after direct taxes are likely to increase by 1.9 per cent a year over the next 10 years — to give an average annual income of £41,500. However, with the average weekly cost of nursing care for self-funders at £1,035, the majority of retired households requiring these services cannot afford to pay the annual fees of £53,820 out of their income, according to research by Irwin...

How Japan and Singapore are reinventing old age

A new demographic dividend – the “longevity dividend” – is emerging as populations age; Singapore, one of the most rapidly ageing populations in the world, and Japan, where around 25% of the population is older than 65, are already responding to this demographic shift and benefit from it; From innovative retirement income and care programmes, Japan and Singapore's governments are already seeing positive results. Also Read Mongolian commercial banks resume providing loans to pensioners Demographic change has favoured economic...