January 2022

Pensions will continue to grow in Ukraine in 2022 - Shmyhal

Pensions will continue to grow in Ukraine in 2022 – Shmyhal

Pension payments will continue to grow in Ukraine in 2022, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has said. He said this at a government meeting on Wednesday, January 12, according to an Ukrinform correspondent. "An increase [in pensions] is expected this year. There are quite a few stages. In particular, the indexation of pensions is planned from March, including for working pensioners, and the program of additional payments will be extended to persons over 70 years of age. Recalculations will be made for...

The Future of Multi-Pillar Pensions

By Lans Bovenberg, Casper van Ewijk & Ed Westerhout Pension systems are under serious pressure worldwide. This pressure stems not only from the well-known trend of population aging, but also from those of increasing heterogeneity of the population and increasing labour mobility. The current economic crisis has aggravated these problems, thereby exposing the vulnerability of many pension schemes to macroeconomic shocks. This book reconsiders the multi-pillar pension scheme against the background of these pressures. It adopts an integral perspective and...

US. NCPERS Proposes a New Tool to Make Public Pension Plans Fiscally Sustainable

Public pensions can be made and kept sustainable for the long haul by incorporating a new tool— sustainability valuation—into funding policies and practices, according to a new study by the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems. Pension systems can use sustainability valuation to monitor their fiscal status on a continuing basis, gaining insights that would enable them to identify fiscal adjustments needed to stabilize pensions long-term, the study found. The study by Michael Kahn, NCPERS director of research, delineates...

December 2021

US. Record Returns Not Enough to Ensure Public Pension Stability

Despite logging average returns of 27.5% during fiscal year 2021, state pension plans still face a large funding shortfall and might have billions more in unfunded liabilities not yet recognized on their books, according to a recent report from nonprofit Equable Institute. “This past year has been an incredibly helpful boost to state pension funds that spent a decade mired in mediocrity,” Equable Institute Executive Director Anthony Randazzo said in a statement. “But even a nearly $400 billion improvement in...

US. California Public Pensions Are Major Fossil Fuel Investors

US. California Public Pensions Are Major Fossil Fuel Investors

California’s climate-conscious policies aren’t matched by the investment choices of its largest public pension funds, according to a report from two environmental groups. Of the 14 top U.S. pension funds analyzed by Stand.earth and Climate Safe Pensions Network, California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known as Calpers, and California State Teachers’ Retirement System, known as CalSTRS, were the largest investors in fossil fuel companies, with $27.1 billion and $15.7 billion, respectively, according to findings published Wednesday. The two combined hold about half...

US. Public Pensions Need a Shift in Investment Strategies

A report, which says their investments have underperformed since the 2008 financial crisis and are costly, suggests officials should switch to purely passive investing. Public employee pension funds, endowment funds and other nonprofit institutional investors in the U.S. have underperformed properly constructed, passively investable benchmarks by a wide margin since the global financial crisis of 2008, contends Richard Ennis, an early pioneer of quant investing and co-founder of U.S. investment consultancy EnnisKnupp, in a research paper. A composite of 46 large...

Elderly Poverty and its Measurement

By Yoko Niimi & Charles Yuji Horioka This paper examines various aspects of elderly poverty and its measurement. It first discusses some of the most important issues relating to measuring elderly poverty. It then reviews recent trends in elderly poverty, which show considerable heterogeneity in the extent of elderly poverty even among developed countries. Such cross-country differences are due at least partly to differences in the generosity of public old-age pensions and other social safety nets for the elderly. Empirical...

US. Most Kentucky pension plans face billions in debts, but not the one for legislators

Despite many billions in public pension debts, Kentucky has a state pension fund that is literally overflowing with cash — the one reserved for legislators. Last week, lawmakers in Frankfort were briefed on the Fiscal Year 2021 performance of their Legislators Retirement Plan, which provides them with state-subsidized pensions and health insurance. Their $79 million pension plan has a funding level of 108.9 percent, which is up from 106.3 percent in 2020. Their retiree health insurance plan is 362 percent funded. By...

UK universities hit by strike action over pay and pensions

More than a million students will be hit by three days of strikes on campuses across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland starting on Wednesday, in the latest round of an increasingly bitter dispute in which university leaders have accused leftwingers within the University and College Union (UCU) of blocking progress over a possible deal. Fifty-eight universities will be affected where staff backed a ballot on strike action called by the UCU, halting lectures and tuition at the country’s largest universities,...

November 2021

Low-income Greek pensioners to get one-off grant to buffer price surge

ATHENS- Greece will hand out one-off grants to low-income pensioners and medical staff ahead of Christmas to shield them from higher energy and food prices, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Monday. Consumer inflation hit a multi-year high of 3.4% in October with costs in the housing sector rising by an annual 7.8%, mainly due to rising electricity, heating oil and natural gas prices. The government has already spent about 700 million euros ($790 million)on subsidies for the majority of Greek...