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on Economics of Ageing |
| By: | Michael D. Giandrea (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics); Kevin E. Cahill (Analysis Group, Inc.); Joseph F. Quinn (Boston College) |
| Abstract: | Are today’s youngest retirees following in the footsteps of their older peers with respect to gradual retirement? Recent evidence from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) suggests that most older Americans with full-time career jobs later in life transitioned to another job prior to complete labor force withdrawal. This paper explores the retirement patterns of a younger cohort of individuals from the HRS known as the “War Babies.” These survey respondents were born between 1942 and 1947 and were 57 to 62 years of age at the time of their fourth bi-annual HRS interview in 2004. We compare the War Babies to an older cohort of HRS respondents and find that, for the most part, the War Babies have followed the gradual-retirement trends of their slightly older predecessors. Traditional one-time, permanent retirements appear to be fading, a sign that the impact of changes in the retirement income landscape since the 1980s continues to unfold. |
| Keywords: | Economics of Aging, Partial Retirement, Gradual Retirement |
| JEL: | J26 J14 J32 H55 |
| Date: | 2007–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bls:wpaper:ec070060&r=age |
| By: | Tomas Kögel (Dept of Economics univ. of Loughborough) |
| Abstract: | The present paper shows empirically that the youth dependency ratio (the population below working age divided by the population of working age) reduces economic growth even after controlling for institutions. The institutional variable, the paper controls for, is the measure for institutions that is recently preferred in prominent work by Acemoglu and co-authors. Institutions turn out to have a significant and positive effect on economic growth. The significance of the youth dependency ratio and of institutions appears to be robust to controlling for various variables, including malaria prevalence. Hence, the paper finds evidence that demography, as well as institutions, both matter for economic growth. |
| Keywords: | Economic Growth; Fertility; Age structure effects. |
| JEL: | J11 O40 O47 |
| Date: | 2007–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lbo:lbowps:2007_14&r=age |
| By: | Giovanni Mastrobuoni |
| Date: | 2006–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pri:indrel:514&r=age |
| By: | Castaneda, Pablo |
| Abstract: | One of the most important consequences of the Chilean pension reform undertaken in the early 1980s was to transfer a significant portion of the risk associated to the financing of pensions, from the State, to the pension fund participants of the newly established compulsory pension system. This paper is concerned with the risk embedded in the portfolio strategies of pension fund portfolio managers. We develop an analytic framework that permits to incorporate the behavior of a pension fund manager in the long-term risk assessment of its investment strategy, where the latter is conducted from the point of view of the pension fund participant, who has preferences over his/her final pension. The pension fund manager’s problem is cast as a dynamic portfolio choice problem, and its solution is used afterwards to quantify the risk exposure of the pension fund participant. Our results from a simulation exercise show that the lower is the risk aversion of the participant, the higher is his/her Wealth-at-Risk —defined as the monetary compensation that leaves the participant indifferent with respect to his/her outside option— a result that is due to the fact that the outside option increases relatively more than the benefit derived from the pension provided by the fund manager. The same logic is behind the negative relationship between stock return volatility and pension risk. |
| Keywords: | Dynamic convex risk measure; Pension system; Portfolio selection |
| JEL: | H55 D81 G18 G11 |
| Date: | 2006–07–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:3347&r=age |
| By: | Juan Pablo Pagano (Departamento de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República); Máximo Rossi (Departamento de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República); Patricia Triunfo (Departamento de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República) |
| Abstract: | The present work studies the incidence of obesity and socioeconomic status on the prevalence of hypertension on the elderly of Montevideo, Uruguay. Based on data from the Survey on Health, Well-being and Aging (SABE project, PAHO-WHO), a bivariate probit model is estimated controlling by the potential endogeneity of obesity. The results obtained confirm the appropriateness of the joint estimation of both outcomes, and led us to state that being obese raises the probability of suffering from hypertension in 50 percentage points. This effect should have been understated in the probit estimation. At the same time, the instruments chosen that pick up religiosity, smoking and eating habits were relevant and valid with the expected coefficient signs. Tobacco consumption reduces the probability of being obese, showing that either smokers have different metabolism that make them burn more calories than non-smokers, or that smokers tend to ingest less amounts of food given the well-known appetite-suppressant effect of tobacco. On the other hand, the results show a positive association between obesity and religiosity, probably meaning that religion acts as a support once the problem is present, more than a mechanism of self-control or censorship. Finally, the thermic effect of food is confirmed, in the sense that as more meals one eats per day less the probability of being obese. The results do not show a significative association between poor health, measured through morbidity (presence of chronic disease hypertension), and low socioeconomic status. Given the fact that the variable that captures socioeconomic status is positive and statistically significative in the obese equation, the negative effects on health status of a worst socioeconomic status might operate through nutritional outcomes. On the other hand, there might be a problem of selection bias, in the sense that individuals of lower status have higher probability of early death (survival effect), and that public provision of health services with an emphasis on the elderly, reduce the gap between purchasing power and access to health care services. |
| Keywords: | obesity, hypertension, endogeneity, elderly |
| JEL: | I10 I12 J14 |
| Date: | 2007–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ude:wpaper:0207&r=age |