July 2019

Retirement Security: Trends in Corporate Restructurings and Implications for Employee Pensions

By Charles A. Jeszeck, David Lehrer, Charles J Ford, Jessica Moscovitch, James Bennett, Lilia Chaidez, Michelle Munn, Jessica Orr, Cady Panetta, Rhiannon Patterson, Rachel Stoiko, Frank Todisco, Weigle Hannah, Adam Wendel Over the past 20 years, corporate restructurings, particularly mergers and acquisitions (M&A) tended to happen more frequently during periods of economic expansion. GAO's analysis found that from 1999 through 2018, M&A activity comprised the largest share of corporate restructurings. In terms of dollar value of completed deals, M&A...

June 2019

Retire In-Home: A New Way to Use a Home to Guarantee Retirement Income

By Arun Muralidhar There is a growing retirement crisis and most of the focus has been on the fact that individuals are not saving enough for retirement, may not have access to pension schemes, and find it difficult to choose from a wide range of retirement products. One solution that has been considered is to improve access to Reverse Mortgages (RMs) so that individuals can convert their (possibly) single largest asset into a through-death income stream. However, current RMs are...

May 2019

Ensuring Retirement Security with Simple GLIDeS

By Adam Kobor, Arun Muralidhar There is a growing retirement crisis and most of the focus has been on the fact that individuals are not saving enough for retirement, may not have access to pension schemes, or are financially illiterate. More critically, assets/financial products available to investors, may not be appropriate for the typical individual saving for retirement. The goal of retirement is to try to guarantee a target level of income ideally from retirement till death. Current glide...

December 2017

How to Invest and Spend Wealth in Retirement? A Utility-Based Analysis

By Servaas van Bilsen (University of Amsterdam), A. Lans Bovenberg (Tilburg University - Center for Economic Research (CentER); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research)) & Roger J. A. Laeven (University of Amsterdam - Amsterdam School of Economics) This paper explores the optimal consumption and investment behavior of a retiree who derives utility from the ratio between consumption and an endogenous habit. By developing a non-trivial linearization to the budget...

November 2017

As good as it gets? The adequacy of retirement income for current and future generations of pensioners

By David Finch & Laura Gardiner (Resolution Foundation) Recent strong growth in the incomes of pensioner households and reductions in pensioner poverty are to be welcomed. But set against much weaker incomes for working age households and the challenges younger generations are facing in accumulating wealth, anxiety is building that these outcomes may not be sustained for future generations of retirees. Their prospects are particularly uncertain given both the big shifts in pensions policy currently in train and the fiscal...

September 2017

Using Behavioral Science to Increase Retirement Savings

By Andrew Fertig, Jaclyn Lefkowitz & Alissa Fishbane We all deserve a dignified retirement, yet for many of us saving enough remains an obscure, unrealized goal. In an ideal world, planning for our retirement would begin with our first job, continue throughout our working years, and end in sufficient savings for a comfortable future. This pathway may be possible for the few among us with employer-provided pensions, where someone else handles all the planning and saving. Yet trends in the retirement...

Do Good Working Conditions Make You Work Longer? Evidence on Retirement Decisions Using Linked Survey and Register Data

By Petri Bockerman (Labour Institute for Economic Research; University of Turku) and Pekka Ilmakunnas (Aalto University School of Business) We analyze the potential role of adverse working conditions and management practices in the determination of employees' retirement behavior. Our data contain both comprehensive information regarding perceived job disamenities, job satisfaction, and intentions to retire from nationally representative cross-sectional surveys and information on employees' actual retirement decisions from longitudinal register data that can be linked to the surveys. Using a trivariate...

July 2017

Life-Cycle Earnings Curves and Safe Savings Rates

By Derek Tharp (Kansas State University) & Michael E. Kitces (The Kitces Report & Nerd's Eye View) Traditional analyses of recommended savings ratios and safe savings rates (SSRs) typically assume constant real earnings growth throughout the one’s career. However, data on the life-cycle earnings patterns of millions of U.S. workers suggests that earnings growth does not occur at a constant rate that matches inflation. Instead, earnings tend to increase at a decreasing rate during the early years of one’s career...

February 2017

How does pension eligibility affect labor supply in couples?

By Rafael Lalive & Parrotta Pierpaolo Many OECD countries are reforming their pension systems. We investigate how pension eligibility affects labor supply in couples. Inspired by a theoretical framework, we measure how the sharp change in the pension eligibility of both partners affects labor force participation. We find that both partners leave the labor force as they become eligible for a pension. The effect of their own pension eligibility is 12 percentage points for women and 28 percentage points for...

Promised and Affordable Replacement Rates in LAC Pension Systems in 2015 and 2100: Methodology and Determinants

By Solange Berstein, Mariano Bosch & María Oliveri This note, originally prepared as an appendix for the 2016 Development in the Americas Report, Saving for Development, surveys the methodology and assumptions used in the discussion of replacement rates for pension systems in Latin America and the Caribbean. (more…)