July 2018

30Jul

Aging in America: A Cultural History

By Lawrence R Samuel Aging is a preoccupation shared by beauty bloggers, serious journalists, scientists, doctors, celebrities--arguably all of adult America, given the pervasiveness of the crusade against it in popular culture and the media. We take our youth-oriented culture as a given but, as Lawrence R. Samuel argues, this was not always the case. Old age was revered in early America, in part because it was so rare. Indeed, it was not until the 1960s, according to Samuel, that...

July 30, 2018
Aging, Books, Labor Market, ,
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07Jul

The Changing Face of Debt and Financial Fragility at Older Ages

By Annamaria Lusardi, Olivia S. Mitchell & Noemi Oggero We investigate changes in older individuals' financial fragility as they stand on the verge of retirement. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we compare how debt has changed for successive cohorts of people age 56–61. Our analysis shows that recent older Americans close to retirement hold more debt, and hence face greater financial insecurity, than earlier generations. This is primarily due to having bought more expensive homes with...

July 7, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, , , ,
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June 2018

30Jun

Questioning Market Aversion in Gender Equality Strategies: Designing Legal Mechanisms for the Promotion of Gender Equality in the Family and the Market

By Hila Shamir (Tel Aviv University - Buchmann Faculty of Law),Tsilly Dagan (Bar Ilan University) & Ayelet Carmeli (Tel Aviv University) Post-industrial economies are at a crossroad. On the one hand countries are dealing with the crisis of unemployment and underemployment, developing strategies to increase labor market participation of all adults, and increase productivity. On the other hand, the same countries are responding to demographic concerns regarding an aging population and decreased birth ratios. These concerns, coupled with a growing...

June 30, 2018
Aging, Articles, Pension design, Regulation, , , , ,
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30Jun

Later Pension, Poorer Health? Evidence from the New State Pension Age in the UK

By Ludovico Carrino (King's College London; Ca Foscari University of Venice - Dipartimento di Economia), Karen Glaser (University of London - Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine (SSHM)) & Mauricio Avendano (King's College London) This paper examines the health impact of UK pension reforms that increased women’s State Pension age for up to six years since 2010. Exploiting an 11% increase in employment caused by the reforms, we show that rising the State Pension age reduces physical and mental...

June 30, 2018
Aging, Articles, Pension design, , , ,
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25Jun

Aging and Disability: Beyond Stereotypes to Inclusion: Proceedings of a Workshop

By Engineering and Medicine National Academies of Sciences Many different groups of people are subject to stereotypes. Positive stereotypes (e.g., “older and wiser”) may provide a benefit to the relevant groups. However, negative stereotypes of aging and of disability continue to persist and, in some cases, remain socially acceptable. Research has shown that when exposed to negative images of aging, older persons demonstrate poor physical and cognitive performance and function, while those who are exposed to positive images of aging...

June 25, 2018
Aging, Books, Labor Market,
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16Jun

Wage Determination in the Long Run, Real Wage Resistance and Unemployment: Multivariate Analysis of Cointegrating Relations in 10 OECD Economies

By Timo Tyrväinen (Bank of Finland) Over the past twenty years or so, unemployment has been increasing in most OECD economies.In the same period, there has been a considerable increase in the wedge between the real cost to the employer of hiring a worker and the net real wage received by the worker.The present study examines whether changes in the wedge (including various tax rates) may have generated long-lasting effects on real labour costs.Behaviour which generates this kind of outcome...

June 16, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market,
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16Jun

Population Aging and the Possibility of a Middle-Income Trap in Asia

By Joonkyung Ha (Hanyang University - Ansan Campus) & Sang-Hyop Lee (University of Hawaii - Department of Economics) We present three conditions for a demography-driven middle-income trap and show that many economies in East, South, and Southeast Asia satisfy all of them. The conditions are (1) support ratio—the ratio of workers to consumers—matters for economic growth, (2) economic development accompanies more investment in human capital and lower fertility due to the quantity–quality trade-off, and (3) current low level of fertility...

June 16, 2018
Aging, Articles, , ,
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10Jun

Inheritances and Inequality across and within Generations

By Andrew Hood & Robert Joyce Today’s elderly have much more wealth to bequeath than their predecessors, primarily as the result of rising homeownership rates and rising house prices. At the same time, today’s young adults will find it harder to accumulate wealth of their own than previous generations did, due to the sharp fall in homeownership, the dramatic decline of defined benefit pensions in the private sector and the stagnation in household incomes. Together, these trends mean inherited wealth is...

June 10, 2018
Aging, Books, Labor Market, Savings, ,
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10Jun

Why Are People Working Longer In The Netherlands?

By Adriaan Kalwij, Arie Kapteyn, Klaas de Vos Labor force participation at older ages has been rising in the Netherlands since the mid-nineteen-nineties. Reforms of the social security and pension systems have often been put forward as main explanations for this rise. However, participation rates above the normal retirement age of 65 have almost tripled for men and quadrupled for women despite the fact that at those ages reforms are unlikely to have had much impact. This suggests other factors...

June 10, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market,
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04Jun

Age Discrimination in European Employment Law: Problems and Potential Reforms

By Dáire McCormack-George (School of Law at Trinity College, Dublin) Irish employment equality law is driven by European Union policy. However, the law on age discrimination in employment is currently in a deeply worrying state. In this essay, I will make two arguments in relation to the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the lawfulness of mandatory retirement ages. First, I will argue that the case law of the Court is, in the main,...

June 4, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, Regulation, ,
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