December 2022

Inferring Occupation Arduousness from Poor Health Beyond the Age of 50
21Dec

Inferring Occupation Arduousness from Poor Health Beyond the Age of 50

By: Vincent Vandenberghe In the absence of a direct description of occupation arduousness, this paper shows how it can be inferred from poor health beyond the age of 50. Using retrospective lifetime data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) including the respondents’ professional career described with ISCO 2-digit, this paper finds a statistically significant link between many occupations and the risk of poor health beyond the age of 50. Next, we quantify the relative contribution...

December 21, 2022
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, , ,
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November 2022
25Nov

PEPP: Catalyst for Pension Innovation?

By Hans van Meerten & T.J.B. Hulshoff In the past two decades, several traditional markets have been 'disrupted' by parties with new business concepts, new technology and, above all, a big focus on consumer experience. Music, video, books, taxi, hotels, banks, meal delivery; examples abound. Is the personal pension savings market up for grabs? If it is up to the EU, yes. Through new PEPP legislation. But will this actually happen? Are providers and consumers ready for this? And what...

November 25, 2022
Articles, Pension design, , ,
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10Nov

How much does Europe spend on pensions?

Iceland Iceland’s pension system is rated by CNBC as the best in the world and yet remarkably it only spends 2.6% of GDP on retirees, the smallest amount in Europe. Pensioners are entitled to the full ellilífeyrir payment if they’ve lived in Iceland for 40 years. Retirees can apply for a basic pension, a pension supplement and a household supplement and all amounts are based on income. The regular pension age is 67, unless you have worked at sea for...

November 10, 2022
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September 2022
30Sep

Do the Retired Elderly in Europe Decumulate Their Wealth? The Importance of Bequest Motives, Precautionary Saving, Public Pensions, and Homeownership

By Charles Yuji Horioka & Luigi Ventura In this paper, we use micro data on a large number of European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to examine the wealth accumulation (saving) behavior of the retired elderly in Europe. To summarize our main findings, we find that less than half of the retired elderly in Europe are decumulating their wealth and that the average wealth accumulation rate of the retired elderly in Europe is...

September 30, 2022
Adequacy, Articles, Savings, , ,
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07Sep

Reducing portfolio volatility is top priority for European pension funds

European pension funds say reducing absolute portfolio volatility is their top risk management priority, as geopolitical tensions and high inflation continue to impact global investment markets. This is according to new research from Alpha Real Capital. Nearly half (46%) of European pension fund professionals interviewed, who collectively manage €324 billion in assets under management, say increasing portfolio diversification is their top strategic asset allocation priority. Meanwhile, more than a quarter (28%) of respondents say their priority is to increase expected...

September 7, 2022
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02Sep

Homeownership and the Perception of Material Security in Old Age

By Claudius Garten, Michal Myck, Monika Oczkowska Homeownership has been shown to be related to various aspects of well-being, although both the causal nature of this relationship and the possible channels behind it have been difficult to identify. We focus on one of the most often quoted mechanisms which could be responsible for the positive effects of homeownership, namely its role in providing material security in old age. Using data from 15 European countries collected in wave 2 of the...

September 2, 2022
Aging, Articles, , ,
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August 2022
19Aug

No Country for Old Men (or Women): The Impact of Migration on Pension Funding Adequacy and Sustainability

By Thomas Poufinas, James Ming Chen, Charalampos Agiropoulos & George Galanos Retirement security is of paramount importance to working people. Adequate retirement income is also a leading concern for private and public pension systems. Pension funding adequacy measures the ability of pension scheme assets to meet a system’s liabilities. Pension managers accumulate assets primarily from employee contributions. Assets then grow through investment returns. Liabilities consist mainly of benefits promised and paid to pensioners. In several countries, even within the European Union,...

August 19, 2022
Articles, Labor Market, , , ,
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17Aug

This is how long people across Europe can expect to work

Whether you love your job—or dream of retirement—most of us want to know how long our working lives will last. The next generation of Europeans are expected to work for an average of 36 years, although there are big differences between countries. Working lives in Europe have been getting longer since 2001, according to the European Commission’s data service Eurostat. They shortened slightly for the first time in 2020 because of COVID-19, but are now up to their pre-pandemic level. The...

August 17, 2022
News, , ,
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11Aug

Public Redistribution in Europe: Between Generations or Income Groups?

By Bernhard Hammer, Michael Christl & Silvia De Poli Governments face a potential trade-off between provision for the population in retirement and the support of working-age households with low income. Using EUROMOD-based microdata from 28 countries, we quantify public redistribution to pensioner- and working-age households, distinguishing also by income group. In general, Northern European countries are characterized by a low net redistribution between households, limited public pensions, but a strong support of low-income households. By contrast, most Southern European countries...

August 11, 2022
Articles, Public Pensions, , ,
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July 2022
15Jul

The Unbearable Lightness of the Reform of the Pension System

By Hans van Meerten & Sanne Vlastuin In this article, Hans van Meerten (Professor of European Pension Law at Utrecht University) and Sanne Vlastuin (Master's Student in Private Law at Utrecht University) discuss the transition to a new Dutch pension system. In particular, they pay attention to European law aspects that could be problematic in this light, including the pension participant as consumer and the information gap of pension participants. More is needed to make the envisaged pension system EU-proof...

July 15, 2022
Articles, System Characterization, , ,
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