December 2021

US. Treasury Sets 2021 Retirement Plan Amendment Deadlines

The IRS has issued its required amendments list for 2021, setting deadlines for changes in qualification requirements for employee benefit plans and end-dates for remedial amendment periods. The remedial amendment period lets employers retroactively fix plan modifications that inadvertently altered their tax status. Generally, employers have until the end of 2023 to make those changes for 2021 amendments. The required amendments pertain to individually designed retirement plans and 403(b) group annuity plans but exclude government-sponsored health and retirement benefits. Read more @Bloomberg...

How Staying Physically Active May Protect the Aging Brain

Staying physically active as we age substantially drops our risk of developing dementia during our lifetimes, and it doesn’t require prolonged exercise. Walking or moving about, rather than sitting, may be all it takes to help bolster the brain, and a new study of octogenarians from Chicago may help to explain why. The study, which tracked how often older people moved or sat and then looked deep inside their brains after they passed away, found that certain vital immune cells...

November 2021

COP26 Special Report on Climate Change and Health

By World Health Organization The 10 recommendations in the COP26 Special Report on Climate Change and Health propose a set of priority actions from the global health community to governments and policy makers, calling on them to act with urgency on the current climate and health crises. The recommendations were developed in consultation with over 150 organizations and 400 experts and health professionals. They are intended to inform governments and other stakeholders ahead of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26)...

October 2021

Health and Aging Before and after Retirement

By Ana Abeliansky & Holger Strulik We investigate health and aging before and after retirement for specific occupational groups. We use five waves of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and construct a frailty index for elderly men and women from 10 European countries. Occupational groups are classified according to low vs. high education, blue vs. white collar color, and high vs. low physical or psychosocial job burden. Controlling for individual fixed effects, we find that,...

Pension, health costs to dwarf COVID debt legacy in long term -OECD

The costs of repaying debt raised to help households and businesses through the COVID-19 crisis will be dwarfed by those from long-term trends like funding pensions and health services as societies age, the OECD said in a report on Tuesday. Read also  Canada. Uber drivers, gig workers pressure Ontario government for employee status Examining the economic outlook out to 2060, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said governments will increasingly have to contend with the costs associated with aging populations...

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Precarious Aging: The Importance of an Equity Response

By Marc A. Garcia, Adriana M. Reyes & Catherine Garcia Older Black, Indigenous, and Latinx adults are at a higher risk of negative COVID-19 outcomes relative to older non-Latinx White adults. Mounting evidence regarding the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color lays bare the effects of long-standing and deeply rooted structural racism in American society. Residential and occupational segregation and unequal access to health-promoting resources such as education, income, wealth, and quality healthcare have exposed and amplified pre-existing...

June 2021

Do adverse health shock s induce myopic financial planning?

By Jialu L. Streeter Health and financial planning have both been found to be crucial to long-term financial stability. However, the impact of a health shock on financial plan-ning horizon was not directly tested. This article traces the trajectories of the financial planning horizon before and after the occurrence of work-limitinghealth shocks, using longitudinal panel data from the Health and RetirementStudy. Results show that, during the 10 years following a health shock, individ-uals are 20 to 39% more likely to...

March 2021

US. Covid-19 Makes Racial And Class Status Longevity Gaps Worse

Everyone knows the poor die sooner than the rich. Some humans can live past 90, but many don’t have access to the health and wealth that lets humans live a normal human life span. In the last 20 years, all longevity gains for Americans have gone to those in the upper half of the income distribution. Boston University researchers Jacob Bor, Gregory Cohen and Sandro Galea found that income and education gaps in life expectancy widened during the period 1980–2014....

December 2020

Intergenerational Mobility of Health in India and Its Implications to Elderly Care

By E. Sownthara Rajan To understand the effect of education of children as an intervention to improve elderly health and suggest the sector of elderly who needs state support. This finding will help in locating a sector of elderly where the targeted geriatric care and elderly support can be provided. There is a prevalent conversation in academic literature about growing elderly population around the world which is estimated will be 22 per cent of the world population by 2050...

October 2020

Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index 2020

By Merced CFA Institute What makes a world-class pension system in 2020? Pension systems around the world are facing additional pressures in 2020. The widespread economic impact due to COVID-19 has had both immediate and long-term implications for retirees. Additionally, increasing life expectancies and rising pressure on public resources to support the health and welfare of older citizens will affect how citizens around the world will retire in the mid to long-term. “The economic recession caused by...