June 2023
23Jun

Sexual orientation and labor market outcomes

By Nick Drydakis  Currently, being gay or lesbian is illegal in almost 80 countries, meaning that 2.7 billion people live in countries where having a minority sexual orientation is a crime. Additionally, fewer than 20% of countries have adopted employment anti-discrimination laws to protect gay and lesbian employees. On average, Australia, Canada, the US, and the EU have the strongest protection of sexual orientation rights, including workplace anti-discrimination laws and some studies in these countries have examined labor market outcomes...

June 23, 2023
Articles, Labor Market, , ,
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23Jun

The Wage Gap Among LGBTQ+ Workers in the United States

By HRC Foundation  In an HRC Foundation analysis of nearly 7,000 full-time LGBTQ+ workers, median earnings were about $900 weekly, about 90% of the $1,001 median weekly wage a typical worker earns in the United States, as reported recently by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Put another way, LGBTQ+ workers earn about 90 cents for every dollar that the typical worker earns. LGBTQ+ people of color, transgender women and men and non-binary individuals earn even less when compared to the...

June 23, 2023
Articles, Labor Market, , , , ,
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16Jun

U.S public pensions are building for the long-term. How pension plans are reacting after a year of shocks

By Ortec Finance U.S. public pension plans have been through a torrid year of investment volatility, rising inflation and increasing interest rates. The Federal Reserve has raised rates nine times in succession taking the rate to 5% - the highest since 2007 – while CPI inflation climbed as high as 9.1% in June 2022. The most recent figure of 4.9% for April is good news but many analysts still expect further Federal Reserve rate rises. The series of economic shocks helps explain...

June 16, 2023
Articles, Pension Management, Reports, , ,
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16Jun

LGBT Elders in a Post-Windsor World: The Promise and Limits of Marriage Equality

By Nancy J.Knauer This Article addresses the uncertain post-Windsor legal landscape from the perspective of LGBT elders and older adults. The demise of DOMA has enhanced access to federal benefits, but it has also increased the complexity that LGBT individuals and their families face as they begin to plan for retirement and beyond. Additionally, marriage equality — even when it is recognized nationwide — will not help LGBT elders and older adults tackle many of the obstacles they face when...

June 16, 2023
Articles, Regulation, , ,
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16Jun

The Role of IRAs in US Households’ Saving for Retirement, 2022

By Sarah Holden & Daniel Schrass This paper presents survey results on the incidence of individual retirement account (IRA) ownership in the United States and the contribution, rollover, and withdrawal activity of IRA-owning households. IRAs play an important role in US households’ retirement saving: In mid-2022, more than four in 10 US households owned IRAs. Traditional IRAs were the most common type of IRA owned (31 percent of US households), followed by Roth IRAs and employer-sponsored IRAs. IRA-owning households often...

June 16, 2023
Articles, Savings, ,
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16Jun

Pioneering Safe & Inclusive LGBT Specific Retirement Accommodation. Exploring Models in the USA, UK, & Spain

By Liam Concannon With significant advances in equal rights for lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) citizens, achieved across the western world during the past few decades, one group that continues to be overlooked is LGBT elders. This article examines the unique discrimination and homophobia faced by older LGBT people living in nursing and residential care homes. It investigates ways in which these environments construct and perpetuate heteronormativity by addressing the needs of heterosexual residents, while at the same...

June 16, 2023
Aging, Articles, , ,
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09Jun

A Complaint Template for Legal Challenges to the Validity of the Statutory ‘Debt Ceiling’

By Robert C. Hockett The Statutory ‘Debt Ceiling’ appearing at 31 USC 3101(b), rooted in the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 aimed at expanding Treasury financing options during the First World War, is not valid in any application that would occasion default on U.S. sovereign debt, other contractual obligations, or Social Security or Veterans’ pension obligations. There are at least seven mutually reinforcing legal grounds for so saying. These include preemption of such application of the Ceiling by the...

June 9, 2023
Articles, System Sustainability, , , , ,
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09Jun

The Effect of Defined Benefit Pensions on Income Survivability and ‘Safe’ Withdrawal Rates in Retirement

By Alan Stocker  Income from a Defined Benefit (DB) pension with various levels of inflation protection (no protection, and inflation caps of 2.5% and 5%) was combined with the income from an investment portfolio to provide a total required income, IR that was constant in inflation adjusted terms. Results of backtesting are presented for retirees in the UK and USA using historical asset returns and inflation. For a value of IR close to the maximum safe withdrawal rate (MSWR) for...

June 9, 2023
Articles, Pension design, , ,
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09Jun

Pension Systems (Un)Sustainability and Fiscal Constraints: A Comparative Analysis

By Burkhard Heer, Vito Polito & Michael Wickens  Using an overlapping generations model, two new indicators of public pension system sustainability are proposed: the pension space, which measures the capacity to pay for pension expenditures out of labour taxation, and the pension space exhaustion probability reflecting demographic uncertainties. These measures reveal that the pension spaces of advanced economies are strikingly different. Most nations have little scope to further finance pensions out of labour income taxation over the next thirty years....

June 9, 2023
Articles, Sustainability, , ,
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May 2023
26May

Pension Reform: Conceptual Foundations and Practical Challenges

By Seamus Duffy & Oliver Giesecke Underfunded pension are the largest liability for state and local governments across the United States. As a result of increasing recognition of the associated risks, recent statutory funding mandates led to a sharp increases in required contributions, threatening city services and employee bases. As funding pressure mounts, pension reforms offer a viable tool for prudent economic policy. We propose five general principles that guide pension reform considerations and discuss how these principle stand in...

May 26, 2023
Articles, System Sustainability, , , ,
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