August 2019

09Aug

Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

By Hannah Fry If you were accused of a crime, who would you rather decide your sentence--a mathematically consistent algorithm incapable of empathy or a compassionate human judge prone to bias and error? What if you want to buy a driverless car and must choose between one programmed to save as many lives as possible and another that prioritizes the lives of its own passengers? And would you agree to share your family's full medical history if you were...

August 9, 2019
Books, Labor Market,
Read more...
09Aug

Gender Gap in Savings Goal Choice: Evidence from Mixed Methods

Ariane Hillig, Jerome Monne, Janette Rutterford, Dimitris Sotiropoulos There has been a good deal of research on gender psychological differences in the context of financial decision making, but no research on the impact of gender difference in the setting of savings goals. To address this question we use two unique datasets, one quantitative and one qualitative. Our quantitative results show that men set more challenging savings goals than women, even when we control for wealth, income, and portfolio risk...

August 9, 2019
Articles, Labor Market, Pension design, Savings, ,
Read more...
03Aug

Informality and the Challenge of Pension Adequacy: Outlook and Reform Options for Peru

By Christoph Freudenberg, Frederik Toscani Past reforms have put the Peruvian pension system on a largely fiscally sustainable path, but the system faces important challenges in providing adequate pension levels for a large share of the population. Using administrative microdata at the affiliate level, we project replacement rates in the defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) pillars over the next 30 years and simulate the impact of various reform scenarios on the average level and distribution of pensions. In...

August 3, 2019
Adequacy, Articles, Labor Market, Regulation, , ,
Read more...
03Aug

Multiemployer plans: evaluating a proposal to spread the pain

By Alicia Munnell, Jean- Pierre Aubry, Wenliang, Hou, Anthony Webb The Multiemployer Pension Reform Act (MPRA) allows multiemployer plans facing insolvency to apply for approval from the Treasury to cut accrued benefits of plan members to prolong plan solvency—a departure from the benefit protections of Employee Retirement Income Security Act. To assess the law's impact, this paper models Central States Teamsters – by far the largest – plan to have applied under the new law to reduce benefits. Using...

August 3, 2019
Articles, Labor Market, Pension design, Savings, , ,
Read more...

July 2019

29Jul

Extending Pension Coverage to the Informal Sector in Africa

By Melis Guven & Ernesto Brodersohn The coverage of pension systems in the Africa region is limited to the small segment of the population in the formal sector. Coverage is thin partly because traditional contributory pension schemes are not responding to the needs of the informal sector. As a result, a large share of the region’s adult population has no access to contributory pension schemes during their working lives. This means they will not be eligible for a pension....

July 29, 2019
Articles, Labor Market, Operation, Pension design, , , ,
Read more...
26Jul

Aging and Work in the 21st Century

By Kenneth S Shultz (Editor), Gary A Adams Aging and Work in the 21st Century, 2nd edition, reviews, summarizes, and integrates existing literature from various disciplines with regard to aging and work, but with a focus on recent advances in the field. Chapter authors, all leading experts within their respective areas, provide recommendations for future research, practice, and/or public policy. Fully revised and updated, the second edition takes up many of the same critical topics addressed in the...

July 26, 2019
Aging, Books, Labor Market, Pension design, , ,
Read more...
12Jul

The Evolution of Retirement Incentives in the U.S.

By Courtney Coile Program Employment rates of older men and women in the U.S. have been rising for the past several decades. Over the same period, there have been significant changes in Social Security and private pensions, which may have contributed to this trend. In this study, we examine how the financial incentive to work at older ages has evolved since 1980 as a result of changes in Social Security and private pensions. We find that the implicit tax on...

July 12, 2019
Articles, Labor Market,
Read more...
12Jul

Retirement Home? Ageing Migrant Workers in France and the Question of Return

By Alistair Hunter This open access book offers new insights into the ageing-migration nexus and the nature of home. Documenting the hidden world of France's migrant worker hostels, it explores why older North and West African men continue to live past retirement age in this sub-standard housing. Conventional wisdom holds that at retirement labour migrants ought to instead return to their families in home countries, where their French pensions would have far greater purchasing power. This paradox is...

July 12, 2019
Books, Labor Market,
Read more...
12Jul

Digitalization and the Future of Work: Macroeconomic Consequences

By Melanie Arntz, Terry Gregory, Ulrich Zierahn Computing power continues to grow at an enormous rate. Simultaneously, more and better data is increasingly available and Machine Learning methods have seen significant breakthroughs in the recent past. All this pushes further the boundary of what machines can do. Nowadays increasingly complex tasks are automatable at a precision which seemed infeasible only few years ago. The examples range from voice and image recognition, playing Go, to self-driving vehicles. Machines are able...

July 12, 2019
Articles, Labor Market, System Sustainability, ,
Read more...
05Jul

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

By Melinda Gates “In her book, Melinda tells the stories of the inspiring people she’s met through her work all over the world, digs into the data, and powerfully illustrates issues that need our attention—from child marriage to gender inequity in the workplace.” — President Barack Obama “The Moment of Lift is an urgent call to courage. It changed how I think about myself, my family, my work, and what’s possible in the world. Melinda weaves together vulnerable,...

July 5, 2019
Adequacy, Books, Labor Market,
Read more...