November 2019

Pensions at a Glance 2019

By OECD The 2019 edition of Pensions at a Glance highlights the pension reforms undertaken by OECD countries over the last two years. Moreover, two special chapters focus on non-standard work and pensions in OECD countries, take stock of different approaches to organising pensions for non-standard workers in the OECD, discuss why non-standard work raises pension issues and suggest how pension settings could be improved. This edition also updates information on the key features of pension provision in OECD countries and...

Essentials of Pension Economics

By Sergio Nisticò This Palgrave Pivot provides a concise overview of pension systems which, whether paid by governments or by private companies, are the sole source of income for millions of people around the world. By 2050, two billion elderly people will have to be ensured some form of income while, at the same time, the prospect facing younger generations is of a gloomy future. This book breaks down the jargon, investigates different designs and analyses these designs'...

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...

Longevity Risk and Retirement Income Planning

By Patrick J. Collins, Huy D. Lam, Josh Stampfli The past 50 years have seen an abundance of research on retirement planning and longevity risk. Reviewed here is the academic side of the research and its varied viewpoints and nuances. The evolution of retirement risk models, retirement portfolio problems and solutions, and annuities are some of the many topics covered. Get the book here

October 2019

Essentials of Pension Economics

By Sergio Nisticò This Palgrave Pivot provides a concise overview of pension systems which, whether paid by governments or by private companies, are the sole source of income for millions of people around the world. By 2050, two billion elderly people will have to be ensured some form of income while, at the same time, the prospect facing younger generations is of a gloomy future. This book breaks down the jargon, investigates different designs and analyses these designs'...

September 2019

Old-Age Poverty: The Household Perspective; A Microsimulation Approach of Pension Entitlements in Germany

By Sebastian Finkler Providing a decent living standard and preventing old-age poverty are the two major challenges of pension insurance schemes. Replacement rates below the poverty line despite many years of contribution represent a major challenge for public pension schemes with respect to the systems 'raison d’être'. The focus of the present paper turns away from individual perspective and considers household retirement incomes in the light of analysing old-age poverty and designing (minimum) pension policies. Using household survey and...

The Development of Social Security in China

 By Gao Zexin, Mario Arturo Ruiz Estrada, Aslam Mohamed, Minsoo Lee Over the past 60 years, the social security system has continued to advance with the development of the economy. Especially since China’s Reform and Opening-up, the role and status of social security have become more and more prominent. With the evolution of value concepts and the transformation of the system interacted with each other, China's social security has embarked on a complicated track of establishing and reform. In...

Institutional Responses to Aging Populations and Economic Growth: A Panel Data Approach

By Patrick M. Emerson, Shawn D. Knabb, Anca-Ioana Sirbu Will an aging population lower economic growth? Economists are generally concerned that the increase in life expectancy could lower economic growth, however, theory does not make a prediction. As life expectancy increases, so should household savings, which results in more physical capital per worker. This will stimulate economic growth. However, as the retired population share increases, this may reduce spending on children as more resources are transferred to the elderly....

August 2019

Using Vignettes to Improve Understanding of Social Security and Annuities

By Anya Samek, Arie Kapteyn, Andre Gray Evidence shows that people have difficulty understanding complex aspects of retirement planning, which leads them to under-utilize annuities and claim Social Security benefits earlier than is optimal. To target this problem, we developed vignettes about the consequences of different annuitization and claiming decisions. We evaluated our vignettes using an experiment with a representative online panel of nearly 2,000 Americans. In our experiment, respondents were either assigned to a control group with no...

Why is Inequality Higher Among the Old? Evidence from China

By Katja Hanewald, Ruo Jia, Zining Liu This paper studies income inequality in old age and its development over the life cycle. We develop a theoretical framework and a new empirical method to show that income is more unequally distributed in old age than in working age. We combine the regression-based inequality decomposition method and the three-step mediating effect test to analyze the transmission of income inequality from initial socioeconomic differences to income inequality in old age. Our study...