March 2024
15Mar

Japan union group announces biggest wage hikes in 33 years, presaging shift at central bank

Japan's biggest companies agreed to raise wages by 5.28% for 2024, the heftiest pay hikes in 33 years, the country's largest union group said on Friday, reinforcing views that the county's central bank will soon shift away from a decade-long stimulus programme. The much-stronger-than-expected increase comes as the Bank of Japan looks close to ending eight years of negative interest rate policy. BOJ officials have stressed the timing of a pivot would depend on the outcome of this year's annual...

March 15, 2024
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01Mar

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...

March 1, 2024
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February 2024
21Feb

Social Spending in Mexico: Needs, Priorities and Reforms

By Swarnali A Hannan, Juan Pablo Cuesta Aguirre & David Bartolini Poverty in Mexico was high before the COVID-19 pandemic and has been exacerbated by the pandemic, with significant variation across states. Education losses from the pandemic are likely to be large and worsen pre-existing disparities; unless mitigated soon, they could contribute to heightened scarring over the medium term. Using state-level and cross-country comparisons, this paper reviews key social programs as well as priorities in education and health. It finds that...

February 21, 2024
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16Feb

Aging Europe

By Eurostat In this interactive report, Eurostat presents us with the most relevant statistics on the aging population of the European Union, covering aspects such as working life, living conditions, access to health and income. All these statistics are accessible at the regional level and by country in the European Union. Get the report here

February 16, 2024
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16Feb

Gender Inequality Over the Life Cycle, Information Provision and Policy Preferences

By Alessandra Casarico, Jana Schuetz & Silke Uebelmesser We conduct a survey experiment with four thousand German respondents and provide information on two measures of gender inequality, separately or jointly: the gender gap in earnings and the gender gap in pensions. We analyze the effect of information provision on respondents’ views on the importance of reducing gender inequality and on their agreement with the adoption of policies targeted at different stages of the life cycle and aimed at reducing the...

February 16, 2024
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15Feb

U.S., U.K. delivery, ride-hailing drivers stop work on Valentine’s Day over pay, employee benefits

Thousands of ride-hailing and delivery workers in the U.S. and the U.K. went on strike on Valentine’s Day, calling for higher pay and other changes to their working conditions. In the U.S., Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. drivers planned day-long strikes and held mid-day demonstrations at airports in several cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Miami, Orlando and Tampa, according to Justice for App Workers, the group organizing the effort. Meanwhile, U.K. delivery drivers for Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Just Eat and...

February 15, 2024
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15Feb

UK. DWP has ‘no plans’ to raise frozen state pension payments for 500,000 expats, minister confirms

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has “no plans” to raise frozen state pension payments for 500,000 Britons living abroad, a Government minister has confirmed. Pensions minister Paul Maynard told MPs the Government will not be introducing a “change to its longstanding policy”. Pensioners who retire overseas in certain countries, including Canada and New Zealand, have their payments frozen at the rate they were paid when they left the UK. An estimated 500,000 older Britons do not receive the full state pension entitlement they...

February 15, 2024
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02Feb

Gender Inequality Over the Life Cycle, Information Provision and Policy Preferences

By Alessandra Casarico, Jana Schuetz & Silke Uebelmesser We conduct a survey experiment with four thousand German respondents and provide information on two measures of gender inequality, separately or jointly: the gender gap in earnings and the gender gap in pensions. We analyze the effect of information provision on respondents’ views on the importance of reducing gender inequality and on their agreement with the adoption of policies targeted at different stages of the life cycle and aimed at reducing the...

February 2, 2024
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January 2024
29Jan

UK. Privately educated adults ‘more likely to have learned about pensions at school’

People who attended a private school are more likely to say they learned about pensions at school (20%) than those who were state-educated (6%), a survey has indicated. More than two-fifths (42%) of privately educated 35 to 44-year-olds said they reviewed or reassessed their pension pot at least once a year, compared with less than a fifth (17%) of state school-educated peers of the same age. Privately educated people were also more likely to hold private pensions outside of employment-linked pensions (40%),...

January 29, 2024
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19Jan

Inter-Generational Spillovers in Labor Supply: Evidence from a Danish Retirement Reform

By Malene C. F. Laczek In this paper, I study how the labor supply of one generation affects the next. Utilizing longitudinal Danish register data and a large retirement reform, I document that parents’ retirement significantly affects the labor supply of their adult children. This inter-generational link is driven solely by mothers. Concretely, mothers’ retirement permanently increases their adult children’s income rank by 7 income rank points, driven by increased hours worked, participation in the labor force, improved occupational rank,...

January 19, 2024
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