December 2022

Fintech Is Coming For Benefits: Best Practices For Employers

Fintech is increasingly touching every aspect of our lives, from retail to banking to blockchain, and now it’s coming for employee benefits. But how could fintech innovation change employer benefits? Employee benefits are essentially a payment or subsidy to employees—with some strings attached. They can apply this payment to specific areas, such as health, student loan debt, 401(k) plans, transportation and more. Benefits are among the biggest drivers of why employees choose companies—and stay. Yet benefits plans remain, in many instances,...

Gabon: Employers to take charge of National Social Security Fund

Henri Claude Oyima, head of Gabon’s private bosses has indicated that the President of the republic Ali Bongo has nodded to the demand of the Federation of private companies of the central African country to take control of the struggling National Social Security Fund, CNSS. “We were pleased with the Head of State’s announcements on the issue of social security. That is, from now on, the National Social Security Fund and the National Health Insurance Fund will be managed, as...

2022 Natixis Global Retirement Index. Danger Zone. Global retirement security challenges come home to roost in 2022

By Natixis When we introduced the Natixis Global Retirement Index in 2012, the world had just emerged from the global financial crisis: Memories of market turmoil were still fresh. Inflation was low, but so was growth. Central banks had slashed interest rates to all-time lows. Balance sheets had ballooned from asset repurchase programs. And public debt had swelled to record highs around the globe. On top of it all, the first wave of the Baby Boom generation had just reached retirement...

November 2022

Preparing for Retirement Reforms

By Karen E. Smith, Eugene Steurele, Damir Cosic Each of the three pillars of the US retirement system—Social Security, employer pensions, and private savings—suffers from serious problems that could threaten the financial security of future retirees. Social Security is at risk of becoming insolvent. If policymakers fail to act, Social Security benefits will be cut by about 25 percent starting in 2035, and even with reform, some combination of a slowdown in benefit growth for retirees and higher taxes on...

Future-Proof Work? The Experiences of Gig Economy Workers in the Philippines

By Christopher Ed Caboverde & John Paul Flaminiano The COVID-19 pandemic caused massive disruptions in the job market. This also puts the "gig economy" in the spotlight since many workers are seeing it as a viable career option, and are considering leaving their 9-to-5 jobs to pursue a career there. Even before the pandemic, the gig economy forms a significant portion of the workforce in different countries. This paper aims to understand the journey and experiences of location-dependent and purely...

Older Persons’ Rights to Social Security

By Alan Gutterman Article 22 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that “[e]veryone, as a member of society, has the right to social security”, and Article 9 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (“ICESCR”) calls on States to “recognize the right of everyone to social security, including social insurance”. In its General Comment No. 19 on the right to social security released in 2008, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (“CESCR”) explained...

October 2022

Older Workers’ Employment and Social Security Spillovers through the Second Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Gopi Shah Goda, Emilie Jackson, Lauren Hersch Nicholas & Sarah Stith The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a large and immediate drop in employment among US workers, along with major expansions of unemployment insurance and work from home. We use Current Population Survey and Social Security application data to study employment among older adults and their participation in disability and retirement insurance programs through the second year of the pandemic. We find ongoing improvements in employment outcomes among older workers in...

Bounded Rationality and Optimal Retirement Age

By Hyeon Park This paper explores a lifecycle model of labor supply and endogenous retirement behavior for households whose planning window is truncated and who will reoptimize as extra information on productivity is revealed over time. This short horizon model internalizes the restriction on rationality for temporal resource allocation and the labor supply is closely dependent on the degree of productivity changes in view. With the model, the endogenous retirement timing---the moment at which the marginal utility from the intended...

US. Social Security Announces Big Bump in 2023 COLA

The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced Oct. 13 that the monthly Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits will increase 8.7% in 2023. The change will affect approximately 70 million Americans and translates to an increase in Social Security benefits of more than $140 per month starting in January 2023. The 8.7% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) will begin with benefits payable to more than 65 million Social Security beneficiaries in January 2023. Increased payments to more than 7...

September 2022

Do the Retired Elderly in Europe Decumulate Their Wealth? The Importance of Bequest Motives, Precautionary Saving, Public Pensions, and Homeownership

By Charles Yuji Horioka & Luigi Ventura In this paper, we use micro data on a large number of European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to examine the wealth accumulation (saving) behavior of the retired elderly in Europe. To summarize our main findings, we find that less than half of the retired elderly in Europe are decumulating their wealth and that the average wealth accumulation rate of the retired elderly in Europe is...