February 2023
20Feb

Asia’s population is shrinking faster than any other continent’s.

Asia faces a problem: Its population is aging faster than any other continent’s. A growing percentage of people in Japan, South Korea and China are over 65, and those countries’ economies are suffering because of a lack of available workers. Governments are struggling to find the money to support retirees. The problem is pronounced in Japan. I spoke to Motoko Rich, The Times’s Tokyo bureau chief, about what it means when a society ages this quickly. Claire: You’ve reported on the...

February 20, 2023
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17Feb

What matters for annuity demand: Objective life expectancy or subjective survival pessimism?

By Karolos Arapakis & Gal Wettstein Objective life expectancy and subjective survival pessimism (defined as the difference between objective and subjective life expectancy) may both affect the demand for annuities. The question this project answers is: how do these two explanations contribute to annuitization decisions in practice? To explore this question, the analysis estimates regression models that include objective life expectancy, subjective survival pessimism, and other characteristics that are linked to annuitization decisions. The results show that, as one would...

February 17, 2023
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16Feb

Flexibility And Earning Potential, Two Lures Of The Gig Economy

We’ve been talking about the gig economy in the United States, which, by the end of 2022, had 70 million gig workers—the most in the world—and how this mode of working might tie in with inclusive capitalism. The choice to work freelance comes with pluses, as we found, and some minuses too. Most of the deficits take the form of the loss of financial security nets. Despite some isolated efforts on the part of U.S. lawmakers to give gig...

February 16, 2023
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14Feb

US. Are Pensions the Answer to the Public-Sector Worker Shortage?

It’s widely known that state and local governments are struggling to recruit and retain workers. In Maryland, there are about 6,000 job postings available. And in Wayne County, Michigan, another approximately 1,000 jobs are available. These mounting vacancies can threaten the continuity of vital public services in public safety, education and transportation.   But as the number of layoff announcements in the private sector increase and a record number of Americans withdraw funds from their 401(k)s as a result of financial...

February 14, 2023
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02Feb

Trade Unions In Bangladesh Win Universal Pensions

The ITUC welcomes a new law passed in the Bangladesh parliament which establishes a framework for universal pensions. This new law represents a breakthrough following intensive advocacy from trade unions, as well as civil society groups, within the Bangladesh Social Protection Advocacy Network (BSPAN) to extend social protection in the country. The new law will provide, for the first time, the possibility for all Bangladeshi workers to benefit from income security in retirement. Previously, the pension system in Bangladesh was...

February 2, 2023
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January 2023
27Jan

Migration could prevent a looming population crisis. But there are catches

To developmental economist Lant Pritchett, "population decline" is a mild way to describe what could be a global demographic crisis. "The reaction is often 'ho-hum' as the rates [of population decline] are slow and hence the issue seems small and in the future," he told NPR in an email. But the problem is not small, he said, and falling birth rates could upend economies. Last week, China reported population decline for the first time in more than 60 years, raising questions about...

January 27, 2023
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17Jan

China’s Population Falls, Heralding a Demographic Crisis

The world’s most populous country has reached a pivotal moment: China’s population has begun to shrink, after a steady, yearslong decline in its birthrate that experts say is irreversible. The government said on Tuesday that 9.56 million people were born in China last year, while 10.41 million people died. It was the first time deaths had outnumbered births in China since the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment that led to widespread famine and death in the 1960s. Chinese...

January 17, 2023
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09Jan

Bracing for the silver tsunami

Since 2011, sales of adult diapers in Japan have outpaced those for infants, reflecting a decline in the country’s fertility rate (live births per woman) from 3.66 in 1950 to around 1.5 by the early 1990s. Since then, Japanese fertility has remained stuck far below the “replacement rate” (2.1), amounting to a mere 1.3 in 2021. And geriatric Japan is not alone. Fertility rates have also dropped below the replacement level in all eurozone countries, and they are strikingly low...

January 9, 2023
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06Jan

The Effect of Pension Wealth on Employment

By Sebastian Becker, Hermann Buslei, Johannes Geyer & Peter Haan This study provides novel evidence about the pension wealth elasticity of employment. For the identification we exploit reform-induced variation of pension wealth that is related to the number of children but which does not affect the implicit tax rate of employment. We use a difference-in-differences estimator based on administrative data from the German pension insurance and find that, on average, the negative employment effect of pension wealth is significant and economically...

January 6, 2023
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05Jan

Korea to take drastic measures to tackle population decline

The government will take drastic measures to tackle Korea's demographic crisis of its falling birthrate and rapidly aging society, said Na Kyung-won, head of the presidential committee on Aging Society and Population Policy, who floated the idea of writing off loans for married couples who give birth to children. "Now is the absolute last chance to take action on the imminent demographic crisis. Responding and adapting to the demographic change is a matter of the nation's survival and sustainability," Na,...

January 5, 2023
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