July 2021
21Jul

Nigeria’s pension penetration level low, says PenOp

Nigeria should deepened its penetration beyond 11 per cent, the President, Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria (PenOP), Mr Wale Odutola, has said. Odutola spoke at the just-concluded National Assembly retreat in Lagos. He stated that there was the need to note the areas where the industry lags behind other countries, one of which is level of pension penetration. He said this became necessary because South Africa’s pension penetration is 19 per cent, Kenya 20 per cent and United Kingdom 77...

July 21, 2021
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June 2021
23Jun

Bright Africa 2020 Pension Industry. Modernising pension policies to future-proof long-term savings

By RISCURA The latest Bright Africa Pensions research highlights how African demographics are evolving and the impact of this on long-term savings. There is no doubt that Africa’s population is and will remain the world’s largest youthful cohort for a long-time to come, so serious thought, planning and innovation are urgently required to address the risk of individuals outliving their retirement savings. Research conducted by Albouy and Nogues (2019) shows that globally, life expectancy measured at age 65, has grown...

June 23, 2021
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23Jun

East Africa’s countries race to form inclusive, affordable pension schemes for informal sector

East African Community partner states are in the process of creating micro-pension schemes for employees in the informal sector to address the low pension coverage in the region, estimated at less than 10 percent. Read also Bright Africa 2020 Pension Industry. Modernising pension policies to future-proof long-term savings A new pension sector survey by global investment firm RisCura shows that Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya are among African countries racing to create affordable and all-inclusive old-age saving schemes for the informal sector...

June 23, 2021
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11Jun

Is informality a barrier to economic growth in Uganda? Empirical analysis

By Stephen Esaku We apply autoregressive distributed lag modeling approach to investigate the short- and long-run relationship between economic growth and informality in Uganda. We use annual time series data, covering the period from 1991 to 2017. We find evidence of short- and long-run relationship between economic growth and informality. The results indicate that an increase in informality significantly reduces the rate of economic growth in both the long- and short-run. This evidence seems to indicate that in low income...

June 11, 2021
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01Jun

Ghana. NPRA advises commercial drivers to join third tier pensions

The National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA) has called on commercial drivers to register and benefit from the third tier pension scheme for a secured future. Mr Samuel Baffour Awuah, Corporate Affairs Officer of the NPRA who made the call said the third tier pension provided decent retirement packages for beneficiaries. Speaking at separate sensitization exercises held for taxi and commercial drivers in Sunyani, Mr Awuah explained retirement was inevitable and a reality of life, which could not be escaped whether in...

June 1, 2021
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May 2021
28May

Population and Labor Dynamics in Large Informal Markets: Implications for Pension Systems with Evidence from Ecuador

By Margarita Velín-Fárez This paper reviews Ecuador’s population structure and labor market dynamics with a focus on the causes of inequality, particularly among older adults receiving contributory pensions. This serves as a basis for characterizing the main restrictions that the Ecuadorian pension system must address. This analysis is valuable for three key reasons. First, the population structure of many less developed countries is converging toward that of developed countries, with older age groups increasing in proportion. Second, Ecuador is among...

May 28, 2021
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13May

Integrating Social Insurance and Social Assistance Programs for the Future World of Labor

By Robert J. Palacios, David A. Robalino Given the prevalence of informal labor, most countries have combined contributory social insurance programs (pensions, unemployment benefits, and health insurance), with non-contributory insurance programs and several types of "safety nets." All of these programs involve different types of subsidies and taxes, sometimes implicit. Because of design problems and the lack of coordination/integration between programs, these subsidies/taxes tend to cause four problems: 1) they can reduce incentives to contribute to mandatory insurance programs and...

May 13, 2021
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06May

Labour Force Survey in the EU, EFTA, United Kingdom and candidate countries

By Eurostat This report describes the main characteristics of the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) conducted in 2019 in the Member States of the European Union (EU), three EFTA countries (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland), the United Kingdom and four candidate countries (Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey). All of these countries provide Eurostat with EU-LFS microdata. The purpose of this report is to inform about the technical features of the surveys carried out in these countries, in order to...

May 6, 2021
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06May

Does it Matter to be Informal? Type of employment and political opinions in the MENA region

By Anil Duman Informal activities are highly persistent in developing countries, and their economic effects are widely studied in the literature. Yet, political consequences of informality are relatively an understudied topic and big chunk of the existing work does not offer systematic examination of how informal sector participation shape preferences and attitudes. Our paper contributes to the literature by focusing on Arab countries that have very stable and large size of informal sectors in the world. Additionally, we take into...

May 6, 2021
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April 2021
15Apr

Financial Inclusion Through Fintech in the Digital Economy

By Eunsook Seo, Kyeong-Won Yoo Since the 2008 global financial crisis, including the recent COVID 19 pandemic, low interest rates and low economic growth have continued around the world. In spite of this low interest rate trend, as the economic downturn prolongs, there is a situation of concern called the “new normal” of low interest rates and low economic growth, and low prices. In this new normal economic structure, the rapid progress of aging is increasing the necessity and desire...

April 15, 2021
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