April 2023

‘Big news’ is India’s population growth is below replacement level: UN expert

While India's population at 1.4 billion has surpassed that of China's, the "latest big news" is that the population growth is below the replacement fertility rate in India and it has a "window of opportunity", according to Rachel Snow, the lead demographer of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). The continued trajectory for India is that while the young population entering the reproductive phase will boost overall fertility, "given the fertility pattern already evident, we can start to anticipate the decline,...

U.S. workers want government to require employers to offer retirement plans

American workers favor government mandates requiring employers to offer retirement plans and make matching contributions, according to a new survey released Tuesday by Natixis Investment Managers. More than 4 in 5 workers (81%) said that employers should be required to offer workplace retirement savings plans, with millennials voicing the greatest support for such a mandate (88%) followed by Generation X (79%) and baby boomers (70%). More than 3 in 5 workers (78%) also said they support requiring employers to make matching...

India to overtake China as world’s most populous country this year

India has surpassed China as the world’s most populous country, according to new UN data, marking a historic crossover moment for the two Asian rivals that are set to shape business and world affairs in years to come. According to the UN Population Fund’s World Population Dashboard, released on Wednesday, India’s population has surpassed 1.428bn, just overtaking China’s more than 1.425bn people. The update in population estimates came as the world body’s main agency that tracks demographic trends, the UNFPA, released...

One in five Korean workers are over 60: Statistics

One out of five Korean workers are over 60 years old, in an aging society with plunging birth rates. The number of elderly still working and the on-year increase in the number of elderly working both reached all-time highs last year. The number of people over 60 who were working last year stood at 5.86 million, hitting the highest figure since data compilation began in 1963, according to Statistics Korea and the Ministry of SMEs and Startups on Monday. The number was...

March 2023

Frames, Incentives, and Education: Effectiveness of Interventions to Delay Public Pension Claiming

By Franca Glenzer, Pierre-Carl Michaud & Stefan Staubli Many people forgo a higher stream of public pension income by claiming early. We provide both quasi-experimental and survey-experimental evidence that the timing of public pension claiming is relatively inelastic to changes in financial incentives in Canada. Using the survey experiment, we evaluate the effect of two different educational interventions and different ways of framing the incentive to delay claiming. While all three types of interventions induce delays, these interventions have heterogeneous...

Pay-as-They-Get-In: Attitudes Towards Migrants and Pension Systems

By Tito Boeri, Matteo Gamalerio, Massimo Morelli & Margherita Negri We study whether a better knowledge of the functioning of pay-as-you-go pension systems and recent demographic trends in the hosting country affects natives' attitudes towards immigration. In two online experiments in Italy and Spain, we randomly treated participants with a video explaining how, in pay-as-you-go pension systems, the payment of current pensions depends on the contributions paid by current workers. The video also explains that the ratio between the number of...

Pension Provision in Thailand

By Robert Palacios & Himanshi Jain This report documents the current state of pension provision in Thailand and options for reform that would increase the adequacy and sustainability of the pension system. While the focus here is on income support, the welfare of the elderly depends on many other government policies ranging from labor market policies to aged care and health services. It is also important to assess the pension system in terms of its broader impact on fiscal sustainability...

February 2023

The rise of elderly workers: The Europeans defying retirement norms and working past the age of 70

While trade unions are mobilising in France to defend retirement at 62, throughout the European Union, men and women are working beyond the age of 65 or even 75. Who are they? The official statistics draw the average picture of a self-employed man aged between 65 and 69, working rather part-time in the health or social sector. But this average situation obviously overlooks the nuances from country to country. In which EU countries do people work beyond the age of 65? Firstly, it’s...

Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president, wants to smother the gig economy

On february 22nd fleets of taxi drivers went on strike and tried to block roads in over two dozen cities in Colombia. Their beef was with Gustavo Petro, the country’s recently elected left-wing president. They cheered when Mr Petro’s administration said that it was going to regulate transport apps, such as Didi and Uber, which are illegal in the country. But his government’s proposals, which were leaked in January, created uproar among ordinary Colombians: one draft suggested they would...

UK urged to curb pension freedoms to boost workforce

Ministers seeking to boost the UK’s workforce should crack down on pension freedoms and tax breaks that encourage wealthy people to retire early, according to an influential think-tank.   In a report on Tuesday, the Resolution Foundation set out a series of measures aimed at tackling the post-coronavirus pandemic rise in economic inactivity. That is now a crucial focus for Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, as he looks for ways to improve the UK’s growth prospects in his Budget on March 15.   Hunt has...