January 2020

New Zealand. Retirement Commissioner backtracks on call to raise pension age because Kiwis can’t afford it

New Zealanders are approaching retirement in poorer shape than their parents' generation did – and that means we cannot afford to raise the pension age, the Retirement Commissioner says. The commission has long argued that an increase in the age of eligibility for superannuation is needed because of the cost of providing it to an increasing number of older people. But now acting commissioner Peter Cordtz has issued recommendations that backtrack on that. In the commission's latest three-yearly Review...

Ireland. Restoring pension age to 65 would cost €620m a year, claims FF

Pulling plans to increase the State pension age will cost the incoming government up to €470 million a year, according to Government’s own figures, Fianna Fáil has said. And there will be a further €150 million bill annually if a transition pension is put in place to cover those forced out of their jobs at 65, the party’s spokesman on social protection Willie O’Dea said. The comments come as political parties come under pressure from voters over plans to...

November 2019

Calibrating Gompertz in Reverse: Mortality-adjusted (Biological) Ages around the World

By Moshe A. Milevsky This paper develops a statistical and methodological framework for inverting the Gompertz-Makeham (GM) law of mortality for heterogenous populations in a manner consistent with a compensation law of mortality (CLaM), to formally define a global mortality-adjusted (biological) age. It implements and calibrates this framework using rates from the Human Mortality Database (HMD) to illustrate its salience and applicability. Among other things, this paper demonstrates that when properly benchmarked, the global mortality-adjusted (biological) age of a...

Mexican president defends indigenous pensions plan

Mexico’s president on Monday defended a plan to provide pensions to indigenous people starting at age 65, compared with 68 for other Mexicans. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was elected last year after campaigning to help marginalized people, said those who question the idea should visit poor indigenous communities to see how residents live. He said indigenous seniors in poor areas are often in worse health than city-dwelling counterparts due to decades of hard labor and poor nutrition. “It...

Sharpening the Teeth of EU Social Fundamental Rights? The Case of State Pension Age in the UK

By Hans van Meerten In this contribution I want to discuss an important and very topical EU Law element of the judgment regarding two claimants (Delve and Glynn), backed by BackTo60, versus the UK Department of Work and Pensions (hereafter: Delve and Glynn). Claimants argued inter alia that the UK State Pension Age (SPA)was discriminatory. I want to focus here not if SPA is discriminatory, but whether the (SPA) falls in the ambit of EU law. Didn’t the UK...

October 2019

Germany: Age Limits For Occupational Pensions Not Discriminatory Against Women

The Federal Constitutional Court clarified that maximum age limits for occupational pension benefits do not violate the general principle of equality. This confirms the jurisdiction of the Federal Labor Court, according to which maximum age limits for occupational pension schemes do not constitute age discrimination or even discrimination against women. Federal Constitutional Court, Non-acceptance order July 23, 2019 – Case 1 BvR 684/14 The complainant had initially retired from gainful employment due to the birth of her child and...

German Bundesbank recommends raising retirement age to 69

Imagine working until at least the age of 69 - that’s what the experts at the Bundesbank in Germany are recommending. They argue that such a change is necessary; otherwise pension payments will fall too low in the face of rising life expectancies. Demographic change puts pressure on German pension system Discussing the prospect of a future reform of the pension system in Germany, the Bundesbank has proposed a long-term increase in the retirement age to 69 years...

August 2019

The Effects of Increasing the Eligibility Age for Public Pension on Individual Labor Supply: Evidence from Japan

By Nobuhiko Nakazawa This paper investigates the effects of increasing the eligibility age for public pension on workers' retirement decisions, focusing on recent Japanese public pension reforms. In Japan, the pensionable age for Employees' Pension Insurance benefits gradually increased from 60 to 65 for males over the course of a decade. Using individual-level administrative data and a regression discontinuity design, I find that raising the pensionable age for flat-rate benefits by one year increases male employment at the critical...

April 2019

Pension burden: More Japanese opt to retire late, extend employment period

Some economists expect the average pension-to-wage ratio to keep deteriorating and worries are growing that Japan's 'pay-as-you-go' pension scheme may be unsustainable Yasuhiro Furuse could have retired two years ago, but he wasn’t entirely happy with his pension income and had to put any such thoughts to bed.It was just as well for Furuse’s employer Orix Corp, a financial services group, which would have struggled to find a replacement, with Japan’s jobless rate at 26-year lows. This win-win arrangement, increasingly common...

June 2018

Later Pension, Poorer Health? Evidence from the New State Pension Age in the UK

By Ludovico Carrino (King's College London; Ca Foscari University of Venice - Dipartimento di Economia), Karen Glaser (University of London - Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine (SSHM)) & Mauricio Avendano (King's College London) This paper examines the health impact of UK pension reforms that increased women’s State Pension age for up to six years since 2010. Exploiting an 11% increase in employment caused by the reforms, we show that rising the State Pension age reduces physical and mental...