July 2023

National survey of gig workers paints a picture of poor working conditions, low pay

By Ben Zipperer, Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock, Daniel Schneider & Kristen Harknett  While the concept of nontraditional, short-term, and contract work has been around since well before the digital age, it wasn’t until the 2010s that digital platform companies like Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, and TaskRabbit began to rise to prominence and shape the way we define gig work today. In the most basic terms, gig work can be defined as work done by individuals who are classified as self-employed, freelancers,...

June 2023

The State of Longevity 2021

By Daragh Campbell  2021 demonstrated that research into antiaging therapies is going from strength-to-strength, and our review of longevity clinical trials shows this clearly. As different areas of research continue to gain traction (cellular reprogramming, in particular), we wanted to analyse exactly how the longevity clinical trial market performed last year. In order to assess clinical trial data across 2021, we interrogated the Longevity.Technology database, which consists of over 250 longevity companies (and growing all the time!). This was used to...

ESG in DC Pensions Report

By Emma Simon & John Greenwood In recent years responsible investment strategies and the integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in the investment process have moved from a niche concern to the mainstream. In the last 12 months ESG and responsible investing have shot to the top of the agenda for pension professionals, driven by a combination of regulatory pressure, increased consumer awareness, reputation management concerns and the Covid pandemic. Greater public awareness of the relationship between investments...

A review of gender differences in retirement income

By Jennifer Curtin & Yanshu Huang  A research report prepared for the Commission for Financial Capability’s Review of Retirement Income Policy, July 2019. This review seeks to answer the following questions: How wide is the Gender Pension Gap in New Zealand? What is the coverage of KiwiSaver by gender? How does this compare with international trends? Is the Gender Pension Gap reducing (as gender pay gaps are) over time (drawing on both international and NZ data where available)? What accounts...

Understanding issues facing LGBT older adults

By Movement Advancement Project & Sage It is estimated that there are approximately 2.7 million LGBT adults aged 50 and older in the United States, 1.1 million of whom are 65 and older. Understanding Issues Facing LGBT Older Adults provides an overview of their unique needs and experiences so that service providers, advocates, the aging network, and policymakers can consider these factors when serving this population or passing laws that impact older adults and the LGBT community. Read book “here”

Long-Term Care Equality Index 2023

By Kelley Robinson & Michael Adams The Long-Term Care Equality Index (LEI) is a program of SAGE and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRCF). The goal of the LEI is to create a network of LTCCs across the country that are providing a welcoming home for older LGBTQ+ people. The Long-Term Care Equality Index 2023 represents the first validated survey on LGBTQ+ inclusion in long-term care and senior housing communities. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation and SAGE are excited to present...

Projections of the Size and Composition of the U.S. Population: 2014 to 2060

By Sandra L. Colby & Jennifer M. Ortman  Between 2014 and 2060, the U.S. population is projected to increase from 319 million to 417 million, reaching 400 million in 2051. The U.S. population is projected to grow more slowly in future decades than in the recent past, as these projections assume that fertility rates will continue to decline and that there will be a modest decline in the overall rate of net international migration. By 2030, one in five Americans...

Sustainability of pension schemes. Building a smooth automatic balance mechanism with an application to the US social security

By Frédéric Gannon, Florence Legros & Vincent Touzé We build a “smooth” automatic balancing mecanism (S-ABM) which would result from an optimal tradeoff between increasing the receipts and reducing the expenditures of a pension scheme. The S-ABM obtains from minimizing a sum of discounted quadratic loss function under the constraint of an intertemporal budget balance. One advantage of this model of “optimal” adjustment is its ability to analyse various configurations in terms of ABMs by controlling the adjustment pace. Notably,...

May 2023

A zoom into Asia’s pension reform journey: different perspectives of a multi-pillar approach

By Calvin Chiu & Elvin Tharm Pension reform in Asia is progressing as the region faces numerous challenges: ageing populations, rising life expectancy and the erosion of traditional family and community support for the elderly. While the traditional state-provided pension may provide one potential source of retirement income, Manulife Investment Management believes that a comprehensive multi-pillar approach, such as that outlined by the World Bank, should be the best way forward. In this initial paper of a new series on...

Bringing Back the State: Understanding Varieties of Pension Re-reforms in Latin America

By Leandro N.Carrera & Marina Angelaki Pension policy is a highly political issue across Latin America. Since the mid-2000s, several countries have re-reformed their pension systems with a general trend toward more state involvement, yet with significant variation. This article contends that policy legacies and the institutional political setting are key to understanding such variation. Analyzing the cases of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, this article shows that where a weak legacy, characterized by low coverage and savings rates, a weakly...