August 2021

Focusing on ‘What Should MENA Pension Systems Look Like for Next 50 Years’ Annual Arab Pensions Conference 2021 Convenes in Manama

How should we design the MENA pension systems for the next 50 years? How do we want our children and their children to retire one or two generations from today? This is the theme or big question the highly attended annual Arab Pensions Conference 2021 will be tackling in its next edition on the 16th and 17th of November. Read also Does it Matter to be Informal? Type of employment and political opinions in the MENA region Hosted in Manama digitally...

Retirement and Voluntary Work Provision: Evidence from the Australian Age Pension Reform

By Rong Zhu This paper examines the empirical link between retirement and the supply of volunteer labor, using panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. To identify the causal impact, we exploit a major reform of the Australian Age Pension which has significantly changed the retirement incentives of older people. We find positive and significant effects of retirement status on the voluntary work provision of older men and women. Longer time spent in retirement...

Ireland. Pensions gap widens as pandemic deepens the divide

Psychologists say we have very little appreciation or concept of ourselves in the future. In other words, our future selves are strangers to each of us. This lack of relationship with our older selves partly explains why we are so bad at planning for the longer term, such as saving towards retirement. According to research published in recent weeks by Standard Life, just under half of people of working age here have an occupational pension here. That's down from just over half at...

Social Security Wealth, Inequality, and Life-cycle Saving: An Update

By John Sabelhaus, & Alice Henriques Volz Social Security wealth (SSW) is the present value of future benefits an individual will receive less the present value of future taxes they will pay. When an individual enters the labor force, they generally face a lifetime of taxes to pay before they will receive any benefits and, thus, their initial SSW is generally low or negative. As an individual works and pays into the system their SSW grows and generally peaks somewhere...

Death and Taxes: Why Longer Lives Cost Money

By Christopher Snowdon The British population is getting older. In 1948, life expectancy was 68. Thanks to healthier lifestyles and medical advances, it is now 81 and is expected to rise to 87 by the end of the next decade. The rapid growth of the elderly population will put a strain on healthcare, social care and welfare provision. The Office for Budget Responsibility predicts that health spending in the UK will rise from 6.2 per cent of GDP in 2019/20 to...

It’s time to give essential workers the protections they deserve

The world's essential workers have kept things running during the pandemic. But many still lack the protections they deserve, such as maternity pay, pensions or paid sickness leave. An upcoming summit, Essential for Recovery, will give these workers a voice and a space in which to address corporate and social leaders. Justina Kgoele has been picking waste in South Africa for the last 25 years. Her income sustains her family, and her work helps to protect children in her community from picking...

2 billion workers of world population are in the informal sector – IMF

The informal economy is a globally widespread and pervasive phenomenon, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has noted. The IMF added that 2 billion workers or 60 percent of the world population participate in the informal sector. Although most prevalent in emerging and developing economies, it is also an important part of advanced economies. Whereas workers and firms may choose to operate in the informal sector to avoid taxes or regulations, 85 percent of all informal workers around the world are in precarious employment in...

July 2021

Joint Retirement of Couples: Evidence from Discontinuities in Denmark

By Esteban García-Miralles & Jonathan M. Leganza We study how social security influences the retirement behavior of couples. First, we exploit over two decades of full-population data and a discontinuity design to document sizable retirement spillovers to spouses when individuals reach pension eligibility age. Next, we explore underlying mechanisms. We find age differences within couples to be a fundamental determinant of joint retirement, which is driven by older spouses working longer. Accounting for these age differences reveals a strong gender...

China to allow tax deductions for care of small children to help boost births

China will allow tax deductions for expenses on children under three as part of a major relaxation in child-bearing policy to stem a dramatic decline in births in the world's most populous country, an official document showed on Tuesday. Beijing announced on May 31 that it would permit married couples to have up to three children, rather than just two. It scrapped a decades-old one-child policy in 2016 in favour of a two-child limit to try and stave off risks to...

Fewer women than men will regain employment during the COVID-19 recovery says ILO

The inequalities between women and men in the world of work that have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic will persist in the near future, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO). A new policy brief finds there will be 13 million fewer women in employment in 2021 compared to 2019, while men’s employment will have recovered to 2019 levels. Even though the projected jobs growth in 2021 for women exceeds that of men, it will, nonetheless, be insufficient to...