December 2021
03Dec

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...

December 3, 2021
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November 2021
13Nov

How Will COVID-19 Affect Pensions for Noncovered Workers?

By Jean-Pierre Aubry, Kevin Wandrei, Laura Quinby Federal law allows certain state and local government employees to be excluded from Social Security if they are covered by an employer pension of sufficient generosity. As a result, approximately one-quarter of state and local workers are not covered by Social Security on their current job. Before COVID-19, these “FICA replacement plans” all satisfied the letter of the law in terms of providing benefits of sufficient generosity. This study has three aims. The...

November 13, 2021
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October 2021
26Oct

COVID caused more than 3 million Americans to retire early, a new Fed analysis finds

More than 3 million Americans decided to retire earlier than they would have due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new analysis. Miguel Faria E Castro, a senior economist at the St. Louis Fed, compared retirees to the baby-boomer trend to distinguish between “normal” and “excess” retirements. As of August, he found, there were slightly over 3 million excess retirements, which is more than half of the 5.25 million people who have left the labor force since the beginning...

October 26, 2021
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08Oct

National pension reform: Why it is imperative in South Africa

When the Department of Social Development (DSD) released its Green Paper on Comprehensive Social Security and Retirement Reforms, the proposal to set up a national pension scheme was swiftly shot down. The Green Paper proposed a National Social Security Fund to which all workers earning over R1,667 a month would contribute. Employers and employees would initially contribute between 8% and 12% of earnings up to a ceiling of R23,000 a month. Such was the force of the opposition that there was...

October 8, 2021
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08Oct

Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: Reforms and Retirement Incentives

By Axel Börsch-Supan & Courtney Coile This ninth phase of the International Social Security project, which studies the experiences of twelve developed countries, examines the effects of public pension reform on employment at older ages. In the last two decades, men’s labor force participation at older ages has increased, reversing a long-term pattern of decline; participation rates for older women have increased dramatically as well. While better health, more education, and changes in labor-supply behavior of married couples may have...

October 8, 2021
Books, Pension design, Regulation, , ,
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07Oct

Income Trajectories in Later Life: Longitudinal Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study

By Olivia S. Mitchell, Robert Clark, Annamaria Lusardi We examine respondents in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to observe how their financial situations unfolded as they aged. We focus on low-income older adults and follow them over time to identify the factors associated with having low income at baseline and thereafter. We find that (a) real income remained relatively stable as individuals approached and entered retirement, and progressed through their retirement years, and (b) labor force participation declined and...

October 7, 2021
Aging, Articles, Pension design, , ,
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September 2021
03Sep

Policy Forum: Tax, Social Security, and Employment Status – Removing the Distortions in the United Kingdom

By Judith Freedman The COVID-19 pandemic has strained tax and social security systems. Cracks that have existed for some time have been opened up further and are unlikely to close without structural repair. New insights into the shifting nature of work, combined with the development of technologies that can provide modern, practical solutions to old problems, offer the opportunity to rethink the way we tax gig workers and other non-standard providers of labour. This article argues that we need to...

September 3, 2021
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August 2021
23Aug

What is work and how affects retirement?

By Manuel Carvallo In order to properly plan for retirement, we need to have a vision of it. Dreams of our future retirement are never a one size fits all. The retirement vision varies from person to person, and it depends on several factors: personal goals, family situation, and type of work. This last factor will largely determine how one should prepare for retirement. In my previous post I mentioned that retirement plans were originally designed to provide benefits to the long-term employees...

August 23, 2021
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12Aug

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...

August 12, 2021
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10Aug

Brexit: Thousands of EU citizens face losing benefits

THOUSANDS of EU citizens living in the UK are set to lose their benefits next month if they haven’t applied for settled status. Campaigners have warned that the UK Government's decision to cut off European nationals could push vulnerable people into destitution. There are fears that many are still unaware that they need to apply for settled status after Brexit. The Independent reports that around 70,000 European nationals who receive benefits had not yet applied to the settlement scheme by the June...

August 10, 2021
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