November 2019
08Nov

Social Protection in Developing Countries: Reforming Systems

By Katja Bender, Markus Kaltenborn, Christian Pfleiderer, Magdalena Sepulveda Carmona Providing universal access to social protection and health systems for all members of society, including the poor and vulnerable, is increasingly considered crucial to international development debates. This is the first book to explore from an interdisciplinary and global perspective the reforms of social protection systems introduced in recent years by many governments of low and middle-income countries. Although a growing body of literature has been concerned with the...

November 8, 2019
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October 2019
21Oct

Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index 2019 (MMGPI)

Ageing populations continue to be a significant issue for many economies as we are living longer and fertility rates continue to decline. Pension systems are becoming more important than ever as households want to maintain their living standards throughout retirement. But how is this possible, especially within the economic environment of low interest rates and reduced economic growth? There are implications for employers, employees, governments, as well as the pension funds. Pension reform is being considered in many countries,...

October 21, 2019
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11Oct

The Quest for Sustainability in Contingent Pension Plans

By Barry Gros, Barbara Sanders The types of pension plans offered to Canadian employees are changing. As membership in traditional defined-benefit pension plans declines, plans in which benefits are contingent on the financial status of the plan are becoming more common. Rather than placing all the risk on sponsors to deliver guaranteed benefits to members, these contingent pension plans require members to take on at least some of the risk that benefits may or may not meet expectations. At...

October 11, 2019
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September 2019
20Sep

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...

September 20, 2019
Adequacy, Aging, Articles, Pension design, , ,
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13Sep

Reforming Social Security: The Challenge of Income Inequality

By David W. Rasmussen Objective: This article examines the role Social Security plays in alleviating poverty among retirees in the context of threats to its solvency. Method: Examining long-term employment trends, declining access to defined benefit pensions and saving behavior can determine if in the more future Social Security beneficiaries are likely to be poor. Results: Labor market trends driven by technical change, global competition and increasing demand for services indicate that more future retirees will have lower life-time...

September 13, 2019
Adequacy, Articles, Regulation, , ,
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06Sep

Twenty Years of Wage Inequality in Latin America

By Julián Messina, Joana Silva This paper documents an inverse U-shape in the evolution of wage inequality in Latin America since 1995, with a sharp reduction starting in 2002. The Gini coefficient of wages increased from 42 to 44 between 1995 and 2002 and declined to 39 by 2015. Between 2002 and 2015, the 90/10 log hourly earnings ratio decreased by 26 percent. The decline since 2002 was characterized by rising wages across the board, but especially among those...

September 6, 2019
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August 2019
30Aug

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...

August 30, 2019
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09Aug

Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

By Adam Tooze In September 2008 the Great Financial Crisis, triggered by the collapse of Lehman brothers, shook the world. A decade later its spectre still haunts us. As the appalling scope and scale of the crash was revealed, the financial institutions that had symbolised the West's triumph since the end of the Cold War, seemed - through greed, malice and incompetence - to be about to bring the entire system to its knees. Crashed is a brilliantly original...

August 9, 2019
Adequacy, Books, Investing, System Sustainability,
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09Aug

Unbelievable: ERISA’s Broken Promise

By Peter J. Wiedenbeck A central but generally neglected objective of federal regulation of pension and welfare benefit plans was to provide workers with accessible and reliable information on which to base their career and financial planning, thereby improving overall economic efficiency. But few workers are equipped with the skills needed to evaluate the costs and benefits of complex retirement saving or health care programs. For that reason ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, requires disclosure...

August 9, 2019
Adequacy, Articles, Pension design, Regulation,
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03Aug

Falling Short: The Coming Retirement Crisis and What to Do About It

By Charles D. Ellis, Alicia H. Munnell, Andrew D. Eschtruth  The United States faces a serious retirement challenge. Many of today's workers will lack the resources to retire at traditional ages and maintain their standard of living in retirement. Solving the problem is a major challenge in today's environment in which risk and responsibility have shifted from government and employers to individuals. For this reason, Charles D. Ellis, Alicia H. Munnell, and Andrew D. Eschtruth have written this concise guide for...

August 3, 2019
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