March 2024

Fiscal Stimulus or Debt Relief: The Effect of Federal Pandemic Aid on State and Local Pensions

By Grace Brang, Sewin Chan & Travis St. Clair Between 2020-2021, the U.S. federal government passed four major pieces of legislation that included nearly $1 trillion in aid to state and local governments. One concern with distributing federal stimulus in the form of intergovernmental transfers is that subnational governments may use the aid to pay down unfunded pension liabilities or other debt rather than preserve employment. We examine the effect of fiscal stimulus passed in response to Covid-19 on public...

Financial Fragility, Financial Resilience, and Pension Distributions

By Robert L. Clark & Olivia S. Mitchell We evaluate Americans’ financial robustness during the Covid-19 pandemic, using measures of financial resilience and financial fragility derived from US surveys of persons age 45-75 from 2020 to 2022. We analyze which factors were associated with resilience and fragility, discuss how these measures changed during the pandemic, and assess whether pre-pandemic resilience led to better outcomes during the period. Results show that stronger resilience was protective in terms of financial fragility, and financial literacy...

April 2023

Retirement Savings Behaviours and Covid-19: Evidence from Thailand

By Paul Gerrans, Sunatharee Lhaopadchan & Sirimon Treepongkaruna This paper utilises administrative data from members of the Thai Government Pension Fund to examine voluntary contributions and investment plan change. We find low overall incidence of both behaviours which increased only modestly during the onset of COVID-19. While the major finding is that members are in the minority if they engage in the behaviour regardless of gender, salary, balance, or experience in the fund, the relative probability varies systematically by member...

March 2023

COVID-19 Private Pension Withdrawals and Unemployment Tenures

By Tristram Sainsbury, Robert V. Breunig & Timothy Watson This is the first study to evaluate the effects of early pension withdrawal policies on tenures on unemployment payments in the COVID-19 context. We use a novel set of linked whole-of-population administrative records to examine more than half-a-million Australians who found themselves newly on an unemployment payment in the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We estimate that receiving a lump sum of up to A$10,000 from superannuation accounts at the...

Covid-19 en América Latina y México: brechas del bienestar

Por Carlos Barba Solano Este trabajo aborda empíricamente las brechas estructurales del bienestar reveladas por la epidemia de Covid-19 en cuatro países de América Latina: Argentina, Costa Rica, México y Panamá. Para ello, aborda diversos ámbitos: el sanitario, el económico, el del empleo y el de la protección social, particularmente en el ámbito de la afiliación a los sistemas de pensiones, la mayor o menor incidencia de la crisis en el ascenso de la pobreza y la pobreza extrema y la capacidad para responder a ese repunte, la agudización de las...

December 2022

The Underpensioned Index 2022 Edition

By The Pensions Policy Institute This report, the third in the series, provides an updated version of the Index, alongside recent data illustrating changes, particularly in the labour market and pension saving, that have been experienced by underpensioned groups since the first Index. Recognising that the current economic landscape is challenging, some of these changes may reflect current circumstances rather than long-term trends, and some of the policies that may be suggested as potential remedies to the underpensioned challenge may not be appropriate to enact during the...

November 2022

México perdió cinco años de esperanza de vida por pandemia de covid

Debido al impacto de la pandemia de covid-19 en Mexico se perdieron cinco años en el indicador de esperanza de vida, esto dependiendo de la densidad de población, ya sea en contextos urbanos y rurales, el cual actualmente ronda los 70 años de edad. Durante la inauguración del Seminario Internacional de Procesos Demográficos y sus Disyuntivas en el Siglo XXI: Hacia una Nueva Carta de Navegación Demográfica, el coordinador del Centro de Investigación y Estudios Avanzados de la Población (CIEAP),...

Desigualdades estructurales y crisis superpuestas en América Latina y el Caribe. ¿Hacia una recuperación transformadora con igualdad?

Por Simone Cecchini Las múltiples desigualdades económicas y sociales que caracterizan a los países de América Latina y el Caribe conspiran en contra de su desarrollo sostenible y tienen una relación directa con la actual crisis económica, social y sanitaria. La pandemia de la COVID-19 y la guerra en Ucrania, sumadas a las brechas estructurales, están dibujando una tormenta perfecta de bajo crecimiento, desocupación, elevada inflación, aumento de la pobreza, el hambre, la desigualdad, el malestar social y la polarización...

October 2022

US. Early retirement took off during the pandemic

Even as many Americans have returned to work over the past year, making up for most of the pandemic losses in the labor force, a sizable number of older workers are choosing to remain on the sidelines. In September, the share of people 55 and older who were working or looking for work was down 1.5 percentage points as compared with February 2020, according to the Labor Department. (For comparison, prime-age workers, or those 25 to 54 years old, are...

Older Workers’ Employment and Social Security Spillovers through the Second Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Gopi Shah Goda, Emilie Jackson, Lauren Hersch Nicholas & Sarah Stith The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a large and immediate drop in employment among US workers, along with major expansions of unemployment insurance and work from home. We use Current Population Survey and Social Security application data to study employment among older adults and their participation in disability and retirement insurance programs through the second year of the pandemic. We find ongoing improvements in employment outcomes among older workers in...