January 2018

Securing the Future for Old Age in the Asia and Pacific Region: Short-Term and Historical Challenges

By Christian Aspalter (BNU-HKBU United International College, Zhuhai, China) This paper sets out to summarize major conundrums, and some of their solutions, in pension reform policy of the years ahead, with particular reference to the Asia-Pacific Region, and here again, Japan and Thailand. The repercussions for non-action pertaining to the reform and overhaul of public pension systems go far beyond the realm of social policy and economic development. The twin-issue of old-age poverty and fiscal sustainability of public pension systems...

December 2017

The Modern Tontine: An Innovative Instrument for Longevity Risk Management in an Aging Society

By Jan-Hendrik Weinert (Goethe University Frankfurt - Faculty of Economics and Business Administration) & Helmut Gründl (Goethe University Frankfurt - Department of Finance; International Center for Insurance Regulation) The changing social, financial and regulatory frameworks, such as an increasingly aging society, the current low interest rate environment, as well as the implementation of Solvency II, lead to the search for new product forms for private pension provision. In order to address the various issues, these new product forms should reduce...

Investigating the Level of Financial Literacy of University Students

By Israel J. dos S. Felipe Sr. (Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto (UFOP)), Harrison Bachion Ceribeli Sr.( Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto (UFOP)) & Lana, T. Q. (Energisa) Considering that the quality of financial decisions taken by individuals depends on their financial knowledge, abilities and attitudes, it is possible to state that the well-being of a population depends on how financially literate it is. In this context, the aim of this study was to measure the financial literacy level of...

Ndc Schemes and Heterogeneity in Longevity: Proposals for Redesign

By Robert Holzmann (University of Malaya; IZA Institute of Labor Economics; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); World Bank), Jennifer Alonso-García (University of New South Wales (UNSW) - ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR)), Heloise Labit-Hardy (University of New South Wales (UNSW) - ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR)) & Andres Villegas (University of New South Wales (UNSW)) Strong and rising empirical evidence across countries finds that longevity is highly heterogeneous in...

Behavioral Impediments to Valuing Annuities: Evidence on the Effects of Complexity and Choice Bracketing

By Jeffrey R. Brown, Arie Kapteyn, Erzo F.P. Luttmer, Olivia S. Mitchell & Anya Samek This paper examines two behavioral factors that diminish people’s ability to value a lifetime income stream or annuity, drawing on a survey of about 4,000 adults in a U.S. nationally representative sample. Our first main finding is that experimentally increasing the complexity of the annuity choice reduces respondents’ ability to value the annuity. We measure lack of ability to value an annuity by the difference...

Income Adequacy Among Canadian Seniors: Helping Singles Most

By Philip Bazel (University of Calgary - The School of Public Policy) & Jack Mintz (University of Calgary - The School of Public Policy; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)) Canadians have heard a great deal of discussion in the national media about expanding the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), driven by concerns that many will retire without having made proper arrangements to adequately replace their incomes with pensions and savings. But the proposed remedies have been targeted at...

Generational Transfers within the Occupational Pension System in Switzerland

By Severine Arnold (-Gaille) (University of Lausanne - Faculty of Business and Economics) & Anca Jijiie (Faculty of Business and Economics) Solidarity, a key element of any social security system, can be defined as the total intended redistributions that take place between the existent groups within the system, with the purpose of helping each other. However, unintended redistributions also exist, affecting the fairness of the system and leading to animosities between these groups, in particular between active members and pensioners....

November 2017

As good as it gets? The adequacy of retirement income for current and future generations of pensioners

By David Finch & Laura Gardiner (Resolution Foundation) Recent strong growth in the incomes of pensioner households and reductions in pensioner poverty are to be welcomed. But set against much weaker incomes for working age households and the challenges younger generations are facing in accumulating wealth, anxiety is building that these outcomes may not be sustained for future generations of retirees. Their prospects are particularly uncertain given both the big shifts in pensions policy currently in train and the fiscal...

Life-Cycle Labour Supply and Social Security Wealth: Evidence from the 1995 Italian Pension Reform

By Giulia Bovini (London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - Department of Economics) This paper studies life-cycle labour supply responses to lower social security wealth. An over-arching pension reform implemented in Italy in 1995 (the Dini pension reform) provides the setting for the analysis. While ushering the transition from a defined-benefit (DB) to a notional defined-contribution (NDC) scheme, it introduced discontinuities in the social security replacement rate based uniquely on years of qualifying retirement contributions accrued by the...

The Effect of Non-Contributory Pensions on Labour Supply and Private Income Transfers: Evidence from Singapore

By Yanying Chen (School of Economics, Singapore Management University) & Yi Jin Tan (School of Economics, Singapore Management University) Non-contributory pensions are becoming increasingly prevalent worldwide. As their effects are likely to be context-dependent, evaluating their effects in a wide range of settings is important for establishing the external validity of the non-contributory pension literature. We use a new monthly panel dataset and a difference-in-differences strategy to study the effect of a new non-contributory pension in Singapore (the Silver Support...