March 2020

Public Health and Disasters: Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management in Asia

By Emily Ying Yang Chan, Rajib Shaw This book presents the health emergency and disaster risk management (H-EDRM) research landscape, with examples from Asia. In recent years, the intersection of health and disaster risk reduction (DRR) has emerged as an important interdisciplinary field. In several landmark UN agreements adopted in 2015–2016, including the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris climate agreement, and the New Urban Agenda (Habitat III), health is...

Social Security and Financial Security at Older Ages

By Jeffrey R. Brown, James J. Choi, Courtney Coile, Richard Woodbury Beginning in September 2003, the Retirement Research Center at the National Bureau of Economic Research conducted a coordinated series of investigations on Social Security in an environment of continually changing demographics, health trends, longevity, labor markets, economic conditions, and other factors. The Center has supported extensive collaborative research over a multiyear horizon to achieve a more fully integrated understanding of Social Security’s challenges and the changing environment in...

Continuing Care Retirement Communities (B2B Procurement) in the Netherlands: B2B Purchasing + Procurement Values

By Editorial DataGroup Europe The Continuing Care Retirement Communities (B2B Procurement) Netherlands eBook Report gives data on the Purchases of 41 Raw Materials, Semi-Finished, Finished Products, plus all other business-to-business Purchases and Expenses by the Companies and Entities in the Continuing care retirement communities sector. The Continuing Care Retirement Communities (B2B Procurement) Netherlands eBook provides 14 years Historic and Forecast data on the Business to Business Purchasing and Procurement in the Continuing care retirement communities sector businesses and organisations...

US. On Social Security benefits, Biden just came around to the increases Sanders has backed for decades

By Mark Weisbrot The biggest demographic divide in the current Democratic primary battle for president is not by gender or race, but by age. This is especially true if we accept the view of some analysts that the race is looking like a two-person contest between front-runner Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. In a recent national poll from Survey USA, Sanders showed a commanding lead among younger voters (age 18-34), with 47% to Biden’s 13%. But among senior citizens (65+), Biden...

February 2020

Progress and Challenges of Nonfinancial Defined Contribution Pension Schemes

The aim of this anthology is to provide new contributions to the collective knowledge of the issues and challenges of designing mandated and earnings-related universal public pension schemes (UPPS), in which a universal public nonfinancial defined contribution (NDC) scheme is one of four design options. In 1994, Nonfinancial Defined Contribution (NDC) Pension Schemes left the crib and was taking its first steps in Sweden, Italy, and Latvia. A couple of years later a fourth sibling was born in Poland, with...

Health, Wealth, and Informality over the Life Cycle

By Julien Albertini, Xavier Fairise, Anthony Terriau How do labor market and health outcomes interact over the life cycle in a country characterized by a large informal sector and strong inequalities? To quantify the effects of bad health on labor market trajectories, wealth, and consumption, we develop a life-cycle heterogeneous agents model with a formal and an informal sector. We estimate our model using data from the National Income Dynamics Study, the first nationally representative panel study in South Africa. We...

Demography and Provisions for Retirement – the Pension Composition, a Behavioral Approach

By B.M.S. van Praag, J. Hop Pensions may be provided for in a modern society by a mix of several methods, namely by voluntary individual savings, mandatory fully-funded occupational pension systems, mandatory social security financed by pay-as-you-go, and old-fashioned hoarding in cash. Here, we call the specific mixture of the four systems the pension composition. We assume that individual workers decide on their own individual savings, that the fully-funded occupational system is decided upon by the age cohort of...

Challenges of Retirement Policy, Social Security Reform, and Retirement Income: A Discussion with Alicia H. Munnell, PhD

By Alicia H. Munnell, Robert Powell, Jason J. Fichtner, Teresa Ghilarducci Director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, Alicia H. Munnell talked with with members of the Retirement Management Journal Editorial Advisory Board in February 2019 about the challenges of addressing retirement policy at the national level and the practical steps advisors can take to help support their clients in retirement. Source: SSRN

January 2020

Health Inequality Among Chinese Older Adults: The Role of Childhood Circumstances

By Binjian Yan, Xi Chen, Thomas M. Gill This paper examines the extent to which childhood circumstances contribute to health inequality in old age and how the contributions may vary across key dimensions of health. We link the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) in 2013 and 2015 with its Life History Survey in 2014 to quantify health inequality due to childhood circumstances for which they have little control. We evaluate comprehensive dimensions of health ranging from cognitive...

China’s social insurance system remains stable

China's social insurance system remained stable in 2019, according to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. By the end of 2019, a total of 967 million people were covered by basic old-age insurance, about 205 million were enrolled in unemployment insurance, and around 255 million people held work-related injury insurance. The gross revenue of the three social insurance funds totaled 5.82 trillion yuan (about 844 billion U.S. dollars), and the total expenditures hit 5.41 trillion yuan in...