July 2024
05Jul

Pensions for Migrants – Leveraging the Renda Success

By Arun Muralidhar, Leandro Sarai & Sid Muralidhar Since migrants typically come from developing countries, with weak currencies, and are considered informal workers in developed countries, with hard(er) currencies, they slip through the economic and social cracks. Even if they earn a reasonable income, they do not have access to the formal financial sector and hence have no retirement security (much like informal workers in developed or developing countries). Brazil’s digitally-enabled, through Tesouro Direto, RendA+ retirement income bond, designed along the...

July 5, 2024
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May 2024
17May

Female Labor Supply and Rural Pension Eligibility in Brazil

By Gaurav Khanna, Margaret Lay, Stephanie Lee & Benjamin Thompson In 1991, Brazil expanded its rural old-age pension to cover millions of previously uncovered women, conditional on work requirements.  We use a difference-in-differences approach to show that this expansion drastically increased women’s employment by nine percentage points, or 26 percent.  This increase in labor force participation occurred among women who were immediately age-eligible, and among younger cohorts that would be eligible in the future. These results illuminate the capacity of...

May 17, 2024
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07May

Brazil officials eye curbs on pension spending, but Lula may resist

Senior officials in Brazil's economic team are signaling a need to curb pension spending in order to shore up public accounts, although their biggest challenge may be convincing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to take such a measure. Despite a sweeping 2019 pension reform, spending on retirements and pension benefits continues to surge, affected by an aging population and Lula's policy of boosting benefits by more than inflation. Treasury Secretary Rogerio Ceron said last week that pension expenses "still deserve attention"...

May 7, 2024
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03May

Pensioen SPECULOOS: Lessons from Brazil for Belgium

By Arun Muralidhar A commonly-accepted retirement goal for a healthy pension is for it to sustain the relatively higher standard-of-living of the latter part of one’s working life throughout retirement. A recent innovation implemented by Brazil in January 2023 might provide a solution to the pension challenges faced by Belgium, and more importantly, satisfy the key goals identified by Belgium Government. We recommend Belgium create and issue an innovative new bond – SPECial ULtra-long Obligatie (PensiOen) Salarisstook (SPECULOOS), known previously...

May 3, 2024
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April 2024
05Apr

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...

April 5, 2024
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October 2023
31Oct

Despite recent economic slowdown, Brazil’s job market keeps improving

While economic indicators show that the Brazilian economy is slowing down, nothing points to the country’s job market cooling down. On Monday afternoon, the Labor Ministry showed that the country created almost 212,000 new formal jobs in September (more than markets expected). And fresh unemployment data published on Tuesday shows that the joblessness rate went down to 7.7 percent in the rolling quarter through September — the lowest since February 2015. According to the latest unemployment reading, the number of employed individuals surged to 99.8 million in Q3,...

October 31, 2023
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July 2022
20Jul

Brazilian insurance regulator publishes guidelines on sustainability requirements for the insurance sector

The Brazilian Superintendence of Private Insurance (“SUSEP”) published Regulation No. 666/2022, setting forth sustainability requirements applicable to the Brazilian insurance sector. Its goal is to establish guidelines for management of risks that are directly related to ESG policies of insurance and capitalization companies, local reinsurers and pension funds. Pursuant to the new requirements, regulated entities must ensure that sustainability risks are properly managed, particularly by preparing a triennial materiality assessment identifying, assessing and classifying the risks to which the entities...

July 20, 2022
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February 2022
17Feb

Earnings Inequality and Dynamics in the Presence of Informality: The Case of Brazil

By Niklas Engbom, Gustavo Gonzaga, Christian Moser & Roberta Olivieri Using rich administrative and household survey data spanning 34 years from 1985 to 2018, we document a series of new facts on earnings inequality and dynamics in a developing country with a large informal sector: Brazil. Since the mid-1990s, both inequality and volatility of earnings have declined significantly in Brazil’s formal sector. Higher-order moments of the distribution of earnings changes show cyclical movements in Brazil that are similar to those...

February 17, 2022
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November 2021
26Nov

Brazilian bill seeks to make infrastructure bonds appealing to global pension funds

Stakeholders in Brazil’s infrastructure sector are hoping for the senate to approve a bill that extends tax breaks on infrastructure debentures, in order to attract global players to invest in financing long-term projects. The country's lower house approved the bill in July and it is now being considered by the upper house. "We’re carrying out several bidding processes that can’t be financed solely with bank financing. We’ll need deep engagement from the capital market, and infrastructure debentures will play a key...

November 26, 2021
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May 2021
04May

Union Demands CPPIB Ditch Brazil Water Privatization Involvement

Canada’s largest union is demanding that the $387.1 billion Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) abandon its investment in a private water and sewage treatment service provider in Brazil. The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) said CPPIB is taking part in a “risky” sell-off of public water and sewage infrastructure being led by controversial President Jair Bolsonaro. “The involvement of the CPPIB in support of Bolsonaro’s privatization program would serve to legitimize his disregard for the needs of the...

May 4, 2021
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