June 2023

U.S public pensions are building for the long-term. How pension plans are reacting after a year of shocks

By Ortec Finance U.S. public pension plans have been through a torrid year of investment volatility, rising inflation and increasing interest rates. The Federal Reserve has raised rates nine times in succession taking the rate to 5% - the highest since 2007 – while CPI inflation climbed as high as 9.1% in June 2022. The most recent figure of 4.9% for April is good news but many analysts still expect further Federal Reserve rate rises. The series of economic shocks helps explain...

A Complaint Template for Legal Challenges to the Validity of the Statutory ‘Debt Ceiling’

By Robert C. Hockett The Statutory ‘Debt Ceiling’ appearing at 31 USC 3101(b), rooted in the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 aimed at expanding Treasury financing options during the First World War, is not valid in any application that would occasion default on U.S. sovereign debt, other contractual obligations, or Social Security or Veterans’ pension obligations. There are at least seven mutually reinforcing legal grounds for so saying. These include preemption of such application of the Ceiling by the...

Pension Systems (Un)Sustainability and Fiscal Constraints: A Comparative Analysis

By Burkhard Heer, Vito Polito & Michael Wickens  Using an overlapping generations model, two new indicators of public pension system sustainability are proposed: the pension space, which measures the capacity to pay for pension expenditures out of labour taxation, and the pension space exhaustion probability reflecting demographic uncertainties. These measures reveal that the pension spaces of advanced economies are strikingly different. Most nations have little scope to further finance pensions out of labour income taxation over the next thirty years....

May 2023

‘Earned, Not Given’? The Effect of Lowering the Full Retirement Age on Retirement Decisions

By Mathias Dolls & Carla Krolage This paper analyzes behavioral responses to a 2014 reform in the German public pension system that lowered the full retirement age (FRA) of individuals with a long contribution history by up to two years and framed the new FRA as reference age for retirement. Using administrative data from public pension insurance accounts, we first document a substantial bunching response at the FRA exceeding the control group’s bunching by 83%. Second, we show in a...

Jamaica. No big pension increase for former prime ministers

Prime Minister Andrew Holness' decision to decline his 214 per cent salary increase and keep his yearly $9 million pay is binding on all former and future heads of government, the administration has disclosed. The figure is critical for former prime ministers in particular because their pension is tied to the salary of the current officeholder. There are three living former prime ministers - PJ Patterson, Portia Simpson Miller, and Bruce Golding. Information Minister Robert Morgan made the clarification at a post-Cabinet...

Access to Pensions, Old-Age Support, and Child Investment in the People’s Republic of China

By Xiaoyue Shan & Albert Park This paper studies how access to public pensions affects old-age support and child investment in traditional societies. Guided by predictions from an overlapping generations model, we analyze the influences of a new pension program in rural People’s Republic of China, using a difference-in-differences approach. We find that the program crowds out transfers from working-age adults, especially men, to their elderly parents. Interestingly, the impact on child investment significantly differs by child gender. While adult...

The Effects of Non-Contributory Pensions on Material and Subjective Well Being

By Rosangela Bando, Sebastian Galiani & Paul Gertler Public expenditures on non-contributory pensions are equivalent to at least 1 percent of GDP in several countries in Latin America and is expected to increase. We explore the effect of non-contributory pensions on the well-being of the beneficiary population by studying the Pension 65 program in Peru, which uses a poverty eligibility threshold. We find that the program reduced the average score of beneficiaries on the Geriatric Depression Scale by nine percent...

U.S. Corporate pension plans stay at or near 100% funded in April

U.S. corporate pension plans remained at or near 100% funded in April after slightly positive returns and slightly falling discount rates kept the numbers from moving too much, according to three new monthly reports. Legal & General Investment Management America estimated the average funding ratio of the typical U.S. corporate pension plan was 100.5% as of April 30, up from 100.3% a month earlier. In its latest monthly Pension Solutions Monitor, LGIMA said the estimated average funding ratio rose in April...

April 2023

US. Closing Pensions For Public Workers Has Proven A Mistake

A measure to close North Dakota's public pension plan is headed to Governor Doug Burgum's desk for signature. Before enacting the measure, the state’s chief executive would be wise to look at the experience of other states that have made such a drastic move. State leaders have learned the hard way that ending pension benefits comes with little to be gained and a big price to pay. More specifically, states that shifted new employees from defined benefit pensions to defined...

US. Aging Population, Higher Life Expectancy Put Pressure on Global Pension Systems

Even though the COVID-19 pandemic caused millions of premature deaths and wiped out nearly a decade of life-expectancy gains, longevity is projected to return to its previous trend and rise to a global average of 77.3 years by 2050 from a global 73.4 years in 2023, data from the 2023 Allianz Pension Report shows. While the American pension system is rated among the best in the world by the Allianz Pension Index, it remains unclear if the U.S. public pension...