November 2024
14Nov

Brazil. Military pensions post largest deficit among retirement systems

The segment is also the one with the most retirement benefits, according to a TCU report Targeted by the fiscal reforms under consideration by the government, Brazil’s military pension system (SPSMFA) recorded a deficit of R$49.73 billion last year, placing it as less sustainable than the General Social Security System (RGPS) and generating a per capita deficit 17 times higher. This data appears in a separate report by Walton Alencar of the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU), presented during the review...

November 14, 2024
News, ,
Read more...
13Nov

Brazil’s aging population poses challenges, economists warn

By Marsílea Gombata Brazil is set to experience rapid demographic changes within the next 20 years, which could slow economic growth and increase expenditures on healthcare and pensions. However, these shifts are not being adequately considered in government decision-making, according to economists from the Fundação Getulio Vargas’s Brazilian Institute of Economics (Ibre-FGV). They caution that, from a budgetary standpoint, the government should exercise greater caution with projected spending in areas like education, given the anticipated decline in the population aged...

November 13, 2024
News, OP Ed, Op-Ed, ,
Read more...

October 2024
25Oct

Beyond Informal Employment: Stagnation and Disguised Employment in Brazil

By Carolina Troncoso Baltar, Esther Dweck, Marilia Marcato & Camila Unis Krepsky This study analyses the Brazilian labour market from 2014 to 2019, focusing on the impact of the country's growth pattern on rising informal and self-employment. After a period of economic growth, Brazil faced a recession (2015-2016) and stagnation (2016-2019). Austerity-driven reforms were implemented, weakening policies aimed at stimulating growth, reducing unemployment, and improving formalization. Using structural decomposition analysis within a demand-driven input-output model, the study examines how changes in demand...

October 25, 2024
Articles, Labor Market, , ,
Read more...

August 2024
23Aug

Brazil’s population decline will happen sooner than predicted

The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) has periodically published findings from the 2022 Census. The population count flagged the fast and steep aging of the Brazilian population, and new projections from the IBGE now show just how steep this process is. According to the new calculations, which factor in indicators such as fertility rate (number of births per woman), life expectancy, and migration, the Brazilian population will increase from the current 203 million inhabitants to 220 million in 2041 — when it...

August 23, 2024
News, ,
Read more...

July 2024
05Jul

Pensions for Migrants – Leveraging the Renda Success

By Arun Muralidhar, Leandro Sarai & Sid Muralidhar Since migrants typically come from developing countries, with weak currencies, and are considered informal workers in developed countries, with hard(er) currencies, they slip through the economic and social cracks. Even if they earn a reasonable income, they do not have access to the formal financial sector and hence have no retirement security (much like informal workers in developed or developing countries). Brazil’s digitally-enabled, through Tesouro Direto, RendA+ retirement income bond, designed along the...

July 5, 2024
Articles, Pension design, , ,
Read more...

May 2024
17May

Female Labor Supply and Rural Pension Eligibility in Brazil

By Gaurav Khanna, Margaret Lay, Stephanie Lee & Benjamin Thompson In 1991, Brazil expanded its rural old-age pension to cover millions of previously uncovered women, conditional on work requirements.  We use a difference-in-differences approach to show that this expansion drastically increased women’s employment by nine percentage points, or 26 percent.  This increase in labor force participation occurred among women who were immediately age-eligible, and among younger cohorts that would be eligible in the future. These results illuminate the capacity of...

May 17, 2024
Articles, Labor Market, , , ,
Read more...
07May

Brazil officials eye curbs on pension spending, but Lula may resist

Senior officials in Brazil's economic team are signaling a need to curb pension spending in order to shore up public accounts, although their biggest challenge may be convincing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to take such a measure. Despite a sweeping 2019 pension reform, spending on retirements and pension benefits continues to surge, affected by an aging population and Lula's policy of boosting benefits by more than inflation. Treasury Secretary Rogerio Ceron said last week that pension expenses "still deserve attention"...

May 7, 2024
News,
Read more...
03May

Pensioen SPECULOOS: Lessons from Brazil for Belgium

By Arun Muralidhar A commonly-accepted retirement goal for a healthy pension is for it to sustain the relatively higher standard-of-living of the latter part of one’s working life throughout retirement. A recent innovation implemented by Brazil in January 2023 might provide a solution to the pension challenges faced by Belgium, and more importantly, satisfy the key goals identified by Belgium Government. We recommend Belgium create and issue an innovative new bond – SPECial ULtra-long Obligatie (PensiOen) Salarisstook (SPECULOOS), known previously...

May 3, 2024
Articles, Pension design, , , , ,
Read more...

April 2024
05Apr

The Effects of Environmental Distress on Labor Markets: Evidence from Brazil

By Danae Hernandez-Cortes & Sophie Mathes This article documents how environmental distress affects individual-level labor market outcomes in Latin America’s largest economy. We collect data on a broad range of environmental distress events namely heat waves, floods, fires, and droughts, and combine these with uniquely rich administrative information covering the universe of formal employment in Brazil from 2003 to 2017. We find heterogeneous labor effects in response to environmental distress. We find that heat waves disrupt employment, increasing retirement rates...

April 5, 2024
Articles, Labor Market, , , ,
Read more...

October 2023
31Oct

Despite recent economic slowdown, Brazil’s job market keeps improving

While economic indicators show that the Brazilian economy is slowing down, nothing points to the country’s job market cooling down. On Monday afternoon, the Labor Ministry showed that the country created almost 212,000 new formal jobs in September (more than markets expected). And fresh unemployment data published on Tuesday shows that the joblessness rate went down to 7.7 percent in the rolling quarter through September — the lowest since February 2015. According to the latest unemployment reading, the number of employed individuals surged to 99.8 million in Q3,...

October 31, 2023
News,
Read more...