July 2021

Delay the Pension Age or Adjust the Pension Benefit? Implications for Labor Supply and Individual Welfare in China

By Yuanyuan Deng, Hanming Fang, Katja Hanewald, Shang Wu We develop and calibrate a life-cycle model of labor supply and consumption to quantify the implications of alternative pension reforms on labor supply, individual welfare, and government budget for China’s basic old-age insurance program. We focus on urban males and distinguish low-skilled and high-skilled individuals, who differ in their preferences, health and labor income dynamics, and medical expense processes. We use the calibrated model to evaluate three potential pension reforms: (i)...

Towards equity and sustainability? China’s pension system reform moves center stage

By Li Yang In this paper I review the latest development of China’s public pension system. Last several decades saw China’s tremendous achievement in various public pension reforms. Especially since the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010), reform has accelerated. By 2019, the public pension system in China has covered almost one billion adults, which makes it the biggest pension system in the world. Together with the expansion of Dibao (Basic living allowance) and the eradication of poverty, the development of pension...

The Economics of Ageing and the Political Economy of Old Age

By William A. Jackson Economic discussion of ageing has been largely neoclassical in approach. Ageing has become a specialism within population economics, which is itself a specialism within the neoclassical mainstream. An alternative view has come from authors in sociology and social policy, who have produced their own 'political economy of old age'. In contrast with neoclassical individualism, sociological depictions of aging have stressed the social construction of old age and the structured dependency of the elderly. Non-neoclassical economists have...

May 2021

World Population Ageing 2019

By United Nations 1. Population ageing is a global phenomenon: Virtually every country in the world is experiencing growth in the size and proportion of older persons in their population. There were 703 million persons aged 65 years or over in the world in 2019. The number of older persons is projected to double to 1.5 billion in 2050. Globally, the share of the population aged 65 years or over increased from 6 per cent in 1990 to 9 per...

Trends in Labor Supply of Older Men and the Role of Social Security

By Zhixiu Yu The labor supply of older men increased from the 1930s to the 1950s cohort. I estimate a structural model that fits the participation and hours worked by the 1930s cohort well. The observed policy changes in normal retirement age, the earnings test, and delayed retirement credits explain 73.4% and 88.7% of the observed rises in labor force participation and hours worked by the 1950s cohort. Additional policy experiments suggest that postponing retirement age have little effect on...

Differences and Similarities in Patterns of Society Ageing in the European Union

By Denisa Kočanová, Viliam Kováč, Jan Buleca Population ageing is a demographic problem, which emphasises the need to be interested in the lives of the most vulnerable group–the elderly. The paper investigates the ageing process and similarity of selected countries in the European Union. The EU Member States were assessed and assigned to appropriate clusters according to several indicators related to the areas that affect the lives of the elderlies, namely health status, labour market conditions, and financial security. We...

Prospective Longevity

By Warren C. Sanderson, Sergei Scherbov From two leading experts, a revolutionary new way to think about and measure aging. Aging is a complex phenomenon. We usually think of chronological age as a benchmark, but it is actually a backward way of defining lifespan. It tells us how long we’ve lived so far, but what about the rest of our lives? In this pathbreaking book, Warren C. Sanderson and Sergei Scherbov provide a new way to measure individual and population aging. Instead...

China Population and Development Studies

By CPDRC, CPA This journal provides an international platform for discussions on topics related to various population phenomena and development issues, complemented by a strong representation of the research trend and achievement in China and other Asian countries. The journal, hosted by China Population and Development Research Center, draws on the energetic and resourceful Chinese research community as well as in close contact with the Asian research community in the area, features the Asian perspective on the field of population...

Aging and Wages of Older Workers in Japan

By Quoc Hung Nguyen We first theoretically argue that labor force aging leads to a fall in the relative wage of older workers based on the Tinbergen's labor supply-demand framework. Using data from Japan's Basic Survey on Wage Structure and Population Census across 47 prefectures, we then estimate that a 10% increase in the relative number of workers aged 55 and older leads to a fall in their corresponding relative wage in a range of 3.5% to 4.3%. This equivalently...

April 2021

Population aging and comparative advantage

By Jie Cai, Andrey Stoyanov In this paper we show that demographic differences between countries are a source of comparative advantage in international trade. Since many skills are age-dependent, population aging decreases the relative supply and increases the relative price of skills which depreciate with age. Thus, industries relying on skills in which younger workers are relatively more efficient will be more productive in countries with a younger labor force and less productive in countries with an older population. Building upon the neuroscience and economics...