December 2021

Understanding and Forecasting Demographic Risk and Benefits

By David Bohl, Barry Hughes & Shelby Johnson There is a global demographic transition underway—mortality rates and fertility rates are declining in almost every country. Different countries are at different stages of this demographic transition, generally corresponding to their level of economic development, and progressing at different speeds. Declining mortality and fertility, along with migration, determine the changing age structures of countries. There are macro-economic, financial, and social burdens and benefits associated with different age structures. Since demographics is largely...

Pension Information and Women’s Awareness

By Paola Profeta, Marta Angelici, Daniela Del Boca, Maria Christina Rossi, Noemi Oggero & Claudia Villosio We explore the role of financial and pension information in increasing women’s knowledge and awareness of their future pension status and interest for pension information. We interview a representative sample of 801 Italian working women to assess their knowledge about pensions, financial issues and their own savings. The responses show that their knowledge and awareness of retirement planning is limited. We then run a...

Spending in the Shadow: The Impact of Unfunded Pensions on Public Services and Public Employees

By Manita Rao The shadow of unfunded public pensions has raised concerns on its consequences for public services and public employees. Some argue that pension liabilities increase the cost of government by crowding out public services. Others suggest that unfunded pensions are more likely to affect public employees and have limited implications for public services. This article empirically examines the extent to which the impact of unfunded pensions is mitigated or has spillover effects on public services and public employees....

Reforms of an Early Retirement Pathway in Germany and Their Labor Market Effects

By Regina T. Riphahn & Rebecca Schrader We investigate the unemployment pathway to retirement in Germany and study the causal effects of two early retirement reforms. Reform 1 (NRA) increased normal retirement age stepwise from 60 to 65. Simultaneously, it became possible to use early retirement with benefit discounts. Reform 2 (ERA) increased the age of early retirement stepwise from 60 to 63. We investigate behavioral responses to the reforms using administrative data and difference-indifferences strategies. We find strong and...

Asset Allocation: Glide Path Design for Target Date Retirement Funds

By Thomas Present & Sharon Persyn In this thesis, we discuss and compare target date retirement fund strategies that have been used in recent literature. These strategies include the 100% equity, glide path, maximum drawdown, risk budget and target return strategy. We conduct sensitivity analyses in order to obtain optimal parameters for the different strategies. We first compare the strategies with rebalancing between two asset classes: equity (Russell 1000) as the risky asset and bonds (10Y US government bonds) as...

Artificial Intelligence and Big Data in the Age of COVID-19

By Francisco J. Bariffi & Julia M. Puaschunder The view that the COVID19 pandemic has set in motion profound changes in our modern societies is practically unanimous. The global effort to contain, cure, and eradicate COVID19 has been greatly benefited by the use, development and/or adaptation of technological tools for mass surveillance based on artificial intelligence and robotics systems. The management of the COVID19 pandemic yet has also revealed many shortcomings generated from the need to make decisions “in extremis”....

Elderly Poverty and its Measurement

By Yoko Niimi & Charles Yuji Horioka This paper examines various aspects of elderly poverty and its measurement. It first discusses some of the most important issues relating to measuring elderly poverty. It then reviews recent trends in elderly poverty, which show considerable heterogeneity in the extent of elderly poverty even among developed countries. Such cross-country differences are due at least partly to differences in the generosity of public old-age pensions and other social safety nets for the elderly. Empirical...

Old-Age Pensions and Female Labour Supply in India

By Vidhya of Unnikrishnan & Kunal Sen Whether cash transfers have unintended behavioural effects on the recipient household’s labour supply is of considerable policy interest. We examine the impact’ of the Indira Gandhi National Old-Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS) on prime-age women’s labour supply decisions in India, where female labour force participation continues to decline over time. We use propensity score matching (PSM) to make households with IGNOAPS recipients comparable with program non-recipients. Further, we use individual fixed effects (FE) to...

EU Pension Taxation: Removing Another Brick in the Wall?

By Hans van Meerten & Philip Bennett On 11 November 2021, the Court of Justice (Third Chamber) decided the case of MH and ILA (Pension rights in case of bankruptcy)(C-168/20). There was no Opinion by the Advocate-General. Although usually a sign thatthe case was not that important,there are exceptions.This seems one o them. This stems from a reference from the High Court of Justice of England and Wales (‘the High Court’) to the Court of Justice. The referred question related to...

November 2021

An Overview of Retirement Income Planning

By Wade D. Pfau Retirement income planning has emerged as a distinct field within financial planning with the realization that risks change dramatically in retirement. The combination of longevity risk, increasing market risk triggered by taking distributions from assets, and spending shocks create new challenges. Wealth management has traditionally focused on accumulating assets without applying further thought to these differences happening after retirement. Retirees experience reduced capacity to bear financial market risk once they have retired. This calls for different...