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September 2021

The Impact of Public Pension Deficits on Households’ Investment and Economic Activity

By Jinyuan Zhang US public state pension deficits are very large, accounting for 18.5% of an average state's GDP and up to 50% in Illinois. In principle, households should respond to this heavy future burden by increasing current savings, particularly in safe assets, since pension deficits are countercyclical. Comparing households residing on opposing sides of states' borders, I document that households in larger-deficit states save more, investing more in safe bank deposits and less in risky stocks. Specifically, households hold...

Social Protection in Lebanon Bridging the Immediate Response With Long- Term Priorities

By Unicef, ILO, & Beyond Since the Beirut Port explosion in August 2020 the social protection debate has been focused on the immediate and short-term response. Building on ongoing efforts for the development of a national social protection strategy for Lebanon, it is important to align the emergency response with medium term priorities and a longer-term vision for the sector. This paper serves to complement the Reform, Recovery and Reconstruction Framework (3RF)1. It draws on the findings of various assessments in...

The Government Debt Iceberg

By Jagadeesh Gokhale Europe and the United States will soon begin to encounter fiscal constraints the like of which we have never seen before. Federal debt as a percentage of GDP more than doubled between 2000 and 2012. According to the US Congressional Budget Office, total national debt is expected to remain close to 100 per cent of GDP during the next decade and begin to increase thereafter as the baby-boomers fully enter retirement. · Debt levels in European Union countries...

Social Investment: A New Zealand Policy Experiment , Jonathan Boston and Derek Gill (eds) (2018)

By Alessandra De Marco The notion of prioritising ‘productive’ social investments over ‘consumptive’ social spending has long been advocated but only sporadically applied. Since 2011, however, New Zealand governments have implemented an ambitious, multi-agency social investment agenda that promises to overhaul public social spending through analyses of citizen-derived data. This commentary focuses on the development and features of the social investment agenda. In doing so, it discusses the apparent primacy of fiscal outcomes over social outcomes, and the practices and...

World Social Protection Report 2020–22

By ILO Despite progress in recent years in extending social protection in many parts of the world, when the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic hit many countries were still facing significant challenges in making the human right to social security a reality for all. This report provides a global overview of progress made around the world over the past decade in extending social protection and building rights-based social protection systems, including floors, and covers the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In...

Policy Forum: Tax, Social Security, and Employment Status – Removing the Distortions in the United Kingdom

By Judith Freedman The COVID-19 pandemic has strained tax and social security systems. Cracks that have existed for some time have been opened up further and are unlikely to close without structural repair. New insights into the shifting nature of work, combined with the development of technologies that can provide modern, practical solutions to old problems, offer the opportunity to rethink the way we tax gig workers and other non-standard providers of labour. This article argues that we need to...

August 2021

Global Pension Risk Survey 2019

By AON Welcome to the findings of Aon’s 2019 Global Retirement Risk Survey for the Asia-Pacific region. Aon’s Global Retirement Risk Survey has been conducted every two years for over a decade. The survey is part of a global series of surveys that follows defined benefit (DB) plan sponsors’ risk management attitudes and practices around the world. This is the first time that the survey has been conducted in the wider Asia-Pacific region. Japan took part in the research in...

A New Look at Racial Disparities Using a More Comprehensive Wealth Measure

By Alice Henriques Volz & Jeffrey P. Thompson Most research measuring disparities in wealth by race relies on data that exclude resources that are disproportionately important to low-wealth and non-white families, namely defined benefit (DB) pensions and Social Security. This paper finds that once these resources are included, disparities in wealth between white families and Black and Hispanic families are substantially smaller and that they are not rising over time. The powerful equalizing roles of DB pensions and Social Security...

Climate Change 2021 The Physical Science Basis

By IPCC This Summary for Policymakers (SPM) presents key findings of the Working Group I (WGI) contribution to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6)1 on the physical science basis of climate change. The report builds upon the 2013 Working Group I contribution to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) and the 2018–2019 IPCC Special Reports2 of the AR6 cycle and incorporates subsequent new evidence from climate science3 . This SPM provides a high-level summary of the understanding of the current state of...

The Origins of ESG in Pensions: Strategies and Outcomes

By Stephanie Lachance, Judith C. Stroehle As intergenerational stewards of capital, pension funds can have many good reasons to embrace environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues in their investment practices. Yet the particular structure of pension funds creates both advantages and disadvantages for the integration of ESG. This paper reviews the historical origins, regulatory mandates, and fund structures of pensions, to tease out exactly which of these characteristics enable and which of them impede the inclusion of ESG at pension...