April 2021
01Apr

Understanding Social Insurance: Risk and Value Pluralism in the Early British Welfare State

By Rachel Friedman This article seeks to make two contributions to the understanding of social insurance, a central policy tool of the modern welfare state. Focusing on Britain, it locates an important strand of theoretical support for early social insurance programs in antecedent developments in mathematical probability and statistics. While by no means the only source of support for social insurance, it argues that these philosophical developments were among the preconditions for the emergence of welfare policies. In addition, understanding...

April 1, 2021
Articles, Pension design, System Sustainability, , , ,
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March 2021
19Mar

The Welfare and Labor Market Effects of Mandatory Pension Savings: Evidence from the Israeli Case

By Adi Brender Many studies show that workers make poor decisions about pension savings. Policy responses to these failures include social security retirement arrangements, tax benefits for pension savings and, in some countries, also mandatory private savings towards retirement. This study examines the response of Israeli employees to the introduction of mandatory pension contributions, and the medium-term labor market effects of the arrangement, using a randomly selected panel of 300,000 employees. The first year of the arrangement, when enforcement was...

March 19, 2021
Adequacy, Articles, Labor Market, Savings, , ,
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11Mar

Gender Gap in Pension Income: Cross-Country Analysis and Role of Gender AttitudesBy

By Anna Veremchuk The aim of this paper is to study the gender pension gap in Europe based on the newest EU-SILC data from the 2018 wave. The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, it provides evidence on factors shaping the gender pension gap in a large number of EU countries. Second, it analyses the relationship between the pension gap and: (1) the coverage of occupational (second pillar) pensions and (2) gender attitudes. The main factor contributing to gender inequality in pension...

March 11, 2021
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11Mar

Shoring Up Shortfalls: Women, Retirement and the Growing Gigsupp Economy

By Caroline Bruckner, Jonathan Barry Forman In recent years, high-profile Silicon Valley firms have engineered billion-dollar IPOs through developing online and app-based platforms that connect service providers and sellers with customers and process their payments (the “online platform economy”). Today, millions of Americans earn income using platforms developed by Uber, Etsy, and Airbnb; and research has identified the limitations of existing federal tax rules to facilitate tax compliance of these workers and considered the consequences of their failure to pay...

March 11, 2021
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09Mar

Delivering prevention in an ageing world: Democratising access to prevention – Consultation paper

By International Longevity Centre UK Following our year-long Prevention in an ageing world programme that sparked conversations from Abu Dhabi to Taipei, Austin, Geneva, Sydney, London all the way to the G20 Health Ministers, the message is clear. It’s never too late to prevent. And the health and economic costs of failing to invest in preventative interventions across the life course are simply too high to ignore. We know that prevention works, but for too long cultural, economic and geographic divides...

March 9, 2021
Aging, Articles, Books, Books, Helathcare, Reports, , ,
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February 2021
26Feb

Protecting people working through platforms: Commission launches a first-stage consultation of the social partners

Today, the Commission launches the first-stage consultation of European social partners on how to improve the working conditions for people working through digital labour platforms. Platform work is developing rapidly in the EU across a growing number of business sectors. It can offer increased flexibility, job opportunities and additional revenue, including for people who might find it more difficult to enter the traditional labour market. However, certain types of platform work are also associated with precarious working conditions, reflected...

February 26, 2021
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25Feb

Emerging Europe strong on women’s economic opportunities but dragged down by low pensions

Countries from the emerging Europe region performed well on the latest global survey of women’s economic opportunities from the World Bank. The post-socialist countries of Central, Southeast and Eastern Europe and Eurasia had an average score of 86.4 points out of 100, while globally, women had just three-quarters of the legal rights afforded to men on average around the world. The report “Women, Business and the Law 2021”, looks at laws and regulations in eight areas that affect women’s economic opportunities...

February 25, 2021
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23Feb

US. 3 Retirement Myths, Debunked: Social Security, The Stock Market And Savings

Retirement should inspire thoughts of mixed drinks on the beach and long afternoons with the grandkids. But for many people, just mentioning the word spurs anxiety. Younger Americans are waiting too long to put money away, middle-aged workers rarely make up for lost time and people approaching retirement hope to hold onto their jobs long enough to save just a few dollars more. Most people know they should be doing more to save for retirement, yet too few of us are...

February 23, 2021
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19Feb

Late-career Unemployment Shocks, Pension Outcomes and Unemployment Insurance

By Samir Elsadek Mahmoudi In response to unemployment shocks, older workers deplete their 401(k)s, particularly after the waiving of the early withdrawal penalty on unemployment-motivated withdrawals at age 55. This paper shows that Unemployment Insurance (UI) keeps older workers from depleting their 401(k) assets following job losses. UI also incentivizes older unemployed workers to delay claiming their Social Security (SS) benefits beyond the earliest age of eligibility, 62. Overall, UI enhances the retirement income of the individuals having a history...

February 19, 2021
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, , ,
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11Feb

Opportunities for extending social security coverage in Jordan

By ILO The report aims to support Jordanian policymakers in the extension of social security to informal workers. It formulates typologies for informal workers outside the social security system, analyses the main constraints to coverage and outlines a range of policy approaches for the extension of coverage. The Jordanian government has been working to expand social security coverage of its workforce. In the context of the National Social Protection Strategy, the Cabinet has committed to developing an action plan to reduce...

February 11, 2021
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