August 2022
24Aug

US. How to reform Social Security to ensure a sustainable future

According to the Social Security Administration, approximately 56 million people depend on Social Security (OASI) for their retirement. For about half of older adults, it provides at least 50% of their income, and for one in four older adults, it provides at least 90% of their income. In addition, it offers social insurance protection to workers who become disabled and to families whose breadwinner dies. In July, the Social Security Board of Trustees reported that Social Security benefits will be...

August 24, 2022
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15Aug

Commentary: The U.S. and Mexico need a binational retirement policy

By Jacqueline L. Angel & Emma Aguila Population aging is complicating retirement planning for Americans, and specifically for immigrants. As a 2017 National Academy of Science study showed, Mexican immigrants who arrive at older ages often struggle to support themselves in the United States and often consider returning home. Yet we lack a binational retirement policy that addresses those concerns. We need bilateral agreements that enable Medicare coverage in Mexico, and a Social Security “totalization” agreement allowing Mexican workers in the...

August 15, 2022
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11Aug

Inequality of Opportunity and Health Performance of Private Health Insurance — Empirical Evidence from China

By Rui Li, Minxue Jia & Su Yang Background: The role of private health insurance in protecting the population's health is an essential global concern. However, the for-profit nature of private health insurance has led to inequality of opportunity for coverage, which has implications for the health performance of insurance.Method: This article uses the 2018 China Urban Statistics Yearbook and cross-sectional data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) of 2015 and 2018. Based on the Heckman two-step...

August 11, 2022
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05Aug

Public Wage and Pension Indexation in the Euro Area: An Overview

By Cristina D. Checherita-Westphal, João Domingues Semeano, Elena Ahonen, Pierrick Stinglhamber, Stefan Van Parys, Johannes Clemens, Katri Urke, Orsolya Soosaar, Maria Vergou, Maria Flevotomou, David Staunton, Jorge Martínez-Pagés, Aris Avgousti, Gintare Zelionkaite, Olivier Delobbe, Florian Henne, Baiba Brusbārde, John Farrugia, Juergen Attard, Fabrizio Renzi, Marco Savegnago, Doris Prammer, Lukas Reiss, Gerard Eijsink, Jip Italianer, Maria Manuel Campos, Andreja Strojan Kastelec, Barbora Palášthyová, Vratislav Pisca & Jarkko Kivistö. If the responses of wages – both private and public – and of...

August 5, 2022
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July 2022
29Jul

U.S. pension promises will go unmet without sweeping reform

This year, anybody receiving an annual statement from America’s mighty social security system might notice a tiny ticking time bomb — if they possess sharp eyes. Tucked into a footnote is a website link that explains that the two funds in this system — called “Disability Insurance” and “Old Age and Survivors Insurance” — have $2.9tn to plug the shortfall between expected payouts and what is gathered each year from payroll taxes. Those trillions sound soothingly big. But they are...

July 29, 2022
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15Jul

IMF Engagement on Pension Issues in Surveillance and Program Work

By IMF The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is increasingly involved in offering policy advice on public pension issues to member countries. Public pension spending is important from both fiscal and welfare perspectives. Pension policy and its reforms can have significant fiscal and distribution implications, can influence labor supply and labor demand decisions, and may impact consumption and savings behavior. This technical note provides guidance on assessing public pension systems’ macrocriticality, i.e., sustainability, adequacy, and efficiency; it also discusses the issues...

July 15, 2022
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15Jul

Old Age Pensions and Social Security Today: Need to Introduce ‘Time Bank’ for the Unmet Social Needs of the Elderly in Uganda

By Kibs Boaz Muhanguzi World over, many programs have been put in place to ensure reasonable welfare and relevance of the elderly senior citizens in the community. Out of these diverse programs, pensions and social security fund, and Social Assistance Grants for the Elderly (SAGE) are common. Of recent, the introduction of time banks; a non-financial, barter system of exchange, with the aim of ensuring access to the unmet social needs of the elderly people in the community has emerged....

July 15, 2022
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June 2022
29Jun

US. Social Security is valuable and needs attention sooner rather than later

This program has demonstrated its worth in tumultuous times The 2022 Social Security Trustees Report, which was prepared in February when the outlook for the economy looked less uncertain, shows a slight decrease in the program's 75-year deficit from 3.54% to 3.42% of taxable payroll (see Figure 1). The depletion date for the trust fund bounced back from 2034 to 2035. What does a deficit of 3.42% of taxable payrolls mean? That figure means that if payroll taxes were raised immediately...

June 29, 2022
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24Jun

That Social Security Income Replacement Cliff Could Hurt

Social Security will keep paying retirement benefits in 2035, even if its trust fund empties out, but the cut in the amount would be huge. That’s the assessment of Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Munnell, one of the top academic retirement researchers in the world, says Social Security should receive enough payroll tax revenue to pay 80% of the currently promised benefits from current income in 2035, and about 74% of the promised benefits...

June 24, 2022
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21Jun

US. Senate Version of SECURE 2.0 Set to Move Forward

The Senate version of SECURE 2.0, titled the “Enhancing American Retirement Now (EARN) Act,” is scheduled for mark up Wednesday morning. The news comes two weeks after Senators Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., introduced a SECURE 2.0-like bill titled the “Retirement Improvement and Savings Enhancement to Supplement Healthy Investments for the Nest Egg (RISE & SHINE) Act.” “Americans deserve dignified retirements after decades of hard work, and our bill is an important step forward,” Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron...

June 21, 2022
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