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July 2017

How Hard Should We Push the Poor to Save for Retirement?

By Andrew G. Biggs (American Enterprise Institute) More than half of U.S. states are working to establish programs what would automatically enrollment in Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) workers who are not offered a retirement plan by their employer. These programs are designed to address a perceived shortfall of retirement saving, particularly among low-wage workers who are less likely to be offered an employer-sponsored plan. But the designers of state-run auto-IRA plans fail to consider three questions: Do the poor need...

Role of Social Security in Explaining the Rate of Saving Disparity: A Historical Study of New Zealand versus Singapore: 1960 – 1993

By Debasis Bandyopadhyay & Vera M. Chung (University of Auckland) This paper provides evidence to argue that the difference in the social security schemes of two countries may help explain the disparity in their saving rates. We examine the argument by limiting our focus to a comparison of New Zealand and Singapore for the period 1960 – 1993. We choose the period to avoid the potential impact of the major restructuring of the New Zealand Superannuation since 1994 toward a...

Policy Reflection: Letter of Credit Usage by Defined Benefit Pension Plans in Canada

By Norma L. Nielson & Peggy L. Hedges (University of Calgary) There is an argument to be made for letting corporations hold off on contributing to their employees’ defined benefit pension plans, as long as there is a guarantee the cash will come eventually. That is the reason that provincial governments began allowing creditworthy companies to instead provide a letter of credit, backed by a Canadian bank, guaranteeing the cash deposit, and secured by the company’s line of credit or...

A Study on the Prospects and Problems of Unorganised Labours in India

By Ravindra B.K. (Alliance University), Pradeep M. D. & T. Ramjani Sab (Srinivas Institute of Management Studies) India comprises 43.7 crore people working with the skill in the residual sector as unorganized labours. Around 24.6 core engage in agriculture, 4.4 crore in construction and remaining people in the manufacturing and service sectors. This sector faces eventual deficiencies in regulations over employment, remuneration pattern, poor employer and employee relationship and casual work culture. Informal sector covers large number of workers from...

Problems and demographic policies in Europe. The Role of Cities

By Gérard-François Dumont (University of Paris 4 Sorbonne) Demographic changes are often unknown because they are part of long-term logics; Yet the future of European societies is in the civil states of its various countries. In the first part, we must first analyze the general demographic changes, in particular with regard to the natural increase in Europe, and then the changes in the geography of the population linked to changes in urbanization. Knowledge of the facts will then allow us...

Income and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Singapore's First National Non-Contributory Pension

By Yanying Chen & Yi Jin Tan (Singapore Management University) Using a new monthly longitudinal survey of elderly Singaporeans, we precisely time and study the announcement and disbursement effects of an exogeneous permanent income shock on a broad range of subjective well-being domains. The source of this permanent income shock is a new means-tested non-contributory pension, the Silver Support Scheme (SSS). Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that pension recipients experienced improved life satisfaction upon announcement of the SSS; this...

Income and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Singapore’s First National Non-Contributory Pension

By Yanying Chen & Yi Jin Tan (Singapore Management University) Using a new monthly longitudinal survey of elderly Singaporeans, we precisely time and study the announcement and disbursement effects of an exogeneous permanent income shock on a broad range of subjective well-being domains. The source of this permanent income shock is a new means-tested non-contributory pension, the Silver Support Scheme (SSS). Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that pension recipients experienced improved life satisfaction upon announcement of the SSS; this...

June 2017

The Causal Effect of Retirement on Health Services Utilization: Evidence from Urban Vietnam

By Thang Dang (University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City) Access to medical services is significantly essential for retaining and improving health status for aging population. Whilst retired individuals tend to have more time for the use of health services, there is only inadequate evidence evaluating the causal effect of retirement on health services utilization. To fulfill this gap in the literature especially from developing countries, this paper estimates the causal effect of retirement on the probability and the frequency...

Long-Term Effects of Extended Unemployment Benefits for Older Workers

By Tomi Kyyrä & Hanna Pesola (VATT Institute for Economic Research) This paper examines the long-term effects of extended unemployment benefits that older unemployed can collect until retirement in Finland. We consider a reform that increased the age threshold of this scheme from 55 to 57 for people born in 1950 or later. Our regression discontinuity estimates show that postponing eligibility by two years increased employment over the remaining working career by seven months. Despite the corresponding reduction in unemployment,...

What Rates of Productivity Growth Would Be Required to Offset the Effects of Population Aging? A Study of Twenty Industrialised Countries

By Frank T. Denton & Byron G. Spencer (McMaster University) A shift in population distribution toward older ages is underway in industrialised countries throughout the world and will continue well into the future. We provide a framework for isolating the pure effects of population aging on per capita GDP, employ the framework in calculations for twenty OECD countries, and derive the rates of productivity growth required to offset those effects. We consider also some labour-related changes that might provide offsets,...