April 2023

How America Saves 2022

By Vanguard Over the past decade, retirement plan sponsors have increasingly turned to automatic solutions to influence employee retirement saving behavior. As a result, plan participation rates have increased, automatic enrollment designs have become stronger, and participant portfolio construction has continued to improve with more age-appropriate asset mixes and less extreme equity allocations. During 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic continued to impact many parts of the economy. While it pushed to recover, the economy faced prominent headwinds that stoked several forms of...

Pension Reforms and Couples’ Labour Supply Decisions

By Hamed Markazi Moghadam, Patrick A. Puhani & Joanna Tyrowicz To determine how wives' and husbands' retirement options affect their spouses' (and their own) labour supply decisions, we exploit (early) retirement cutoffs by way of a regression discontinuity design. Several German pension reforms since the early 1990s have gradually raised women's retirement age from 60 to 65, but also increased ages for several early retirement pathways affecting both sexes. We use German Socio-Economic Panel data for a sample of couples...

Mandatory Pension Contributions: Effects on Household Consumption and Savings

By Linda Sandris Larsen, Ulf Nielsson, Mara Nutu & Jesper Rangvid Using rich register data from Denmark, we study whether people save enough to maintain their pre-retirement level of consumption during retirement. We find that 77% of retirees do. This high fraction is driven by mandatory labour market contributions. The 23% of individuals who do not save enough to maintain their pre-retirement level of consumption are less likely to have mandatory pension schemes and do not compensate for the lack...

Menos del 60% de los mexicanos ahorran para su retiro, ya que gastan el dinero en el corto plazo

El futuro de los mexicanos es incierto, debido a que menos del 60% tiene la posibilidad de ahorrar dinero para su retiro, y la mayoría utiliza sus ahorros para gastos de corto plazo o imprevistos. Específicamente entre los años 2018 y 2021, el ahorro para el retiro activo de los mexicanos se redujo del 67.8% al 56.6% debido al impacto que generó la pandemia de COVID-19 en los empleos y el nivel de ingresos, de acuerdo con un estudio...

Aging, Inadequacy, and Fiscal Constraint: The Case of Thailand

By Phitawat Poonpolkul, Ponpoje Porapakkarm & Nada Wasi We use an overlapping generations model to study the challenge in developing countries with a large informal sector and aging populations. We use Thailand as a case study and incorporate its labor market structure and its public pension system into the calibrated model. Unlike developed countries, workers in developing countries commonly transit from the formal sector to the informal sector, which can be in the early stage of their working life. This...

Perú. Trabajadores aportarían el 9% de sus ingresos para su jubilación

La inexorable reforma del sistema de pensiones sigue gestándose en diversos frentes, pero desde la Comisión de Trabajo del Congreso ya hay una propuesta concreta: reducir la carga al trabajador e involucrar a los empleadores. El predictamen denominado “ley que optimiza el sistema de pensiones” propone que el afiliado ya no destine hasta el 13% de sus ingresos para su pensión, sino un 9%. El resto de la tajada lo complementarán el empleador (hasta en 4%) y el Estado (1%). “El...

Chile. Chile Vamos presenta propuesta de reforma de pensiones a ministra Jara: plantean libertad de elección y fortalecimiento de las cuentas individuales

Tal como se tenía previsto, este martes los jefes de bancadas de Chile Vamos se reunieron con la ministra del Trabajo, Jeannette Jara, para entregarle su propuesta en materia de reforma previsional. La reunión se sostuvo en las dependencias de la oficina de la Secretaría General de la Presidencia (Segpres) en la Cámara de Diputados. En su propuesta, Chile Vamos plantea una lista de siete puntos. “Para avanzar en una reforma que responda a lo exigido por los chilenos, es...

Colombia. El debate sobre la reforma laboral que trasciende a la pensional

La ministra de trabajo de Colombia, Gloria Inés Ramírez, se aferra a las anotaciones de las iniciativas que podrían marcar su legado como primera militante comunista en integrar el gabinete presidencial. Lleva consigo el resumen de las reformas laboral y pensional, dividido en cuatro columnas cuidadosamente organizadas: lo que dicta la norma actual, los cambios que contemplan los nuevos proyectos, en qué artículo de la Constitución o convenio internacional se sustenta cada uno de ellos y las modificaciones que...

US. NYC pension leaders to seek emissions cut plans from fund managers

New York City pension leaders will press external fund managers, including private market fund managers, on Wednesday for details on their plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions, officials said. Public, and private market managers that have faced less pressure on climate issues to date, run most of the roughly $240 billion in New York City pension fund assets. Boards overseeing the majority of that money have approved new expectations for those managers, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander said, which...

$2 Billion Loss at Sweden’s Pension Fund Has Stocks Chief Put on Leave

Sweden’s biggest pension fund Alecta has put its equities chief on leave and announced a plan to reduce risk exposure after reporting $2 billion in investment losses tied to last month’s US banking crisis. On Tuesday, Alecta said it would scale back large stakes in companies far from its home market and named Ann Grevelius as acting head of equity portfolio management. Liselott Ledin, the equities chief responsible for making Alecta one of the largest shareholders in Silicon Valley Bank...