February 2025
17Feb

Living Beyond Age 100: A Possibility With Financial Impact

Living beyond age 100 might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but think about how many once-impossible ideas are now part of everyday life. Air travel, landing on the moon, mobile phones and even the ability to map our DNA were unthinkable not long ago. Now, breakthroughs in medicine and technology are nudging us closer to the possibility of living significantly longer, healthier lives. While immortality isn’t on the table just yet, the idea of living well beyond 100...

February 17, 2025
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14Feb

The Economic History of American Inequality: New Evidence and Perspectives

By Martha J. Bailey, Leah Platt Boustan & William J. Collins This volume refines and extends the economic history literature on economic inequality in the United States. Economic inequality manifests itself on various dimensions, including access to resources and to economic security, as well as access to education and opportunities for migration, marriage and other important life decisions. Measuring inequality and studying its variation over time and in response to economic shocks such as recessions and wars deepen our understanding of how the...

February 14, 2025
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07Feb

Places versus People: The Ins and Outs of Labor Market Adjustment to Globalization

By David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson, Maggie R. Jones & Bradley Setzler This chapter analyzes the distinct adjustment paths of U.S. labor markets (places) and U.S. workers (people) to increased Chinese import competition during the 2000s. Using comprehensive register data for 2000–2019, we document that employment levels more than fully rebound in trade-exposed places after 2010, while employment-to-population ratios remain depressed and manufacturing employment further atrophies. The adjustment of places to trade shocks is generational: affected areas recover primarily by adding workers to...

February 7, 2025
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January 2025
31Jan

The Looming Crisis: China’s Pension System Faces a Generational Challenge

By Jessica Huang China, a nation of immense scale and ambition, is in the grip of an urgent demographic crisis. Declining birth rates and rising life expectancy are rapidly aging the population. Within the next two decades, the number of retirement-age individuals is expected to surpass the entire population of the United States, with an estimated 402 million people over 60 by 2040—28% of China’s total population. This demographic shift is straining the workforce, social services, healthcare infrastructure, and economic productivity, marking...

January 31, 2025
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31Jan

Iran’s Aging Population: A Looming Crisis

On January 28, the state-run website Eco Iran published a report titled “Iran’s Population Is Getting Older,” highlighting the significant demographic shifts in Iranian urban households over the past decade (2014–2024). The report reveals a troubling trend: the decline of the young population and the rapid aging of society, posing serious economic and social challenges. Demographic Shifts: A Declining Young Population A review of official statistics underscores a clear decline in the birth rate. The share of children under one year...

January 31, 2025
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24Jan

Challenges Related to Aging Population

By Drishti The Vision Foundation The Supreme Court of India refused to entertain a writ petition that sought the establishment of a dedicated Ministry for senior citizens. The writ petition referred to senior citizens (population ageing) as a vulnerable class that deserves special attention under Article 21 of the Constitution, which ensures the right to a dignified life. Source Drishtiias

January 24, 2025
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23Jan

Inside the Plan to Receive Thousands of Mexicans Deported From the U.S.

Mexico’s plan to receive thousands of its deported citizens from the United States is nothing short of ambitious. Plans are underway to build nine reception centers along the border — massive tents set up in parking lots, stadiums and warehouses — with mobile kitchens operated by the armed forces. Details of the initiative — called “Mexico Embraces You” — were revealed only this week, although Mexican officials said they had been devising it for the past few months, ever since...

January 23, 2025
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17Jan

Pensionomics 2025: Measuring the Economic Impact of Defined Benefit Pension Expenditures

By Dan Doonan & Iliana Boivie Pensionomics 2025: Measuring the Economic Impact of Defined Benefit Pension Expenditures finds pension spending powered by U.S. private and public sector defined benefit pensions contributed significantly to the economy. In 2022, retiree spending of public and private sector pension benefits generated $1.5 trillion in total economic output, supporting 7.1 million jobs across the nation. In addition to its impact on employment and economic activity, pension spending bolstered public finances in 2022, adding $224.3 billion in...

January 17, 2025
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17Jan

Designing Benefits for Platform Workers

By Jonathan Gruber Designing benefits for the growing platform workforce in the U.S. poses significant challenges. While platform workers need protection against unforeseen shocks, work that is often part time and spread across multiple platforms makes the traditional benefits model untenable. This paper reports the results from a survey of drivers and couriers working with Uber to help understand their benefits preferences. We find that there is a wide diversity across these workers in platform earnings, the share of platform...

January 17, 2025
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17Jan

Retirement Consumption and Pension Design

By Jonas Kolsrud, Camille Landais, Daniel Reck & Johannes Spinnewijn This paper analyzes consumption to evaluate the distributional effects of pension reforms. Using Swedish administrative data, we show that on average workers who retire earlier consume less while retired and experience larger drops in consumption around retirement. Interpreted via a theoretical model, these findings imply that reforms incentivizing later retirement incur a substantial consumption-smoothing cost. Turning to other features of pension policy, we find that reforms that redistribute based on...

January 17, 2025
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