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on Economics of Ageing |
| By: | Ellen R. McGrattan; Edward C. Prescott |
| Keywords: | Debt - United States ; Taxation |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedmsr:473&r=age |
| By: | Javier Olivera Angulo (University College Dublin) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we explore the patterns of the division of inter-vivos financial transfers from parents to adult children in a sample of 12 European countries. We exploit two waves of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) for 50+. Contrary to previous studies, we find a higher frequency of parents dividing equally their transfers. We argue that altruistic parents are also concerned with norms of equal division, and hence don’t fully offset child income differences. The parents start to give larger transfers to poorer children if the child income inequality becomes unbearable from the parent’s view. We find econometric evidence suggesting this behaviour under different specifications and strategies. Furthermore, contextual variables like the gini coefficient and pension expenditures help to explain country differences with respect to the division of inter-vivos transfers. The lower frequency of equal division found in studies with American data may respond to the higher inequality and relatively lower pension expenditures in US. |
| Keywords: | inter-vivos transfers, altruism, equal division, Europe |
| JEL: | D19 D64 J18 |
| Date: | 2012–09–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucd:wpaper:201220&r=age |
| By: | Montizaan, Raymond (ROA, Maastricht University); Vendrik, Maarten (Maastricht University) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the effects of social comparisons accompanying a substantial reform of the Dutch pension system on the job satisfaction of workers who are close to retirement. The reform implies that public sector workers born on January 1, 1950, or later face a substantial reduction in their pension rights, while workers born before this threshold date can still retire under the old, more generous rules. Using unique matched survey and administrative panel data on male public sector workers born in 1949 and 1950, we find strong and persistent effects on job satisfaction that are sizable compared to income effects on well-being. The drop in satisfaction is strongly affected by social comparisons with colleagues. Treated workers are less affected by the reform when the treatment group is larger in the organization where they are employed. Moreover, the social comparison effect is especially prevalent in organizations that stimulate their employees to work in teams. We also find evidence that workers compare their own replacement rate with the average replacement of comparable individuals in their organization, but the major part of the social comparison effect is non-monetary. |
| Keywords: | social comparison, well-being, retirement |
| JEL: | D63 D1 I3 J26 |
| Date: | 2012–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6863&r=age |
| By: | C. MARBOT (Insee); D. ROY (Insee) |
| Abstract: | Confronted with an ageing population, developed countries are facing the challenge of providing care to a growing number of disabled elderly people. Knowing how many they will be and, given the current pensions and welfare systems, how much it will cost to care for them is crucial to policymakers. The INSEE pensions microsimulation tool (called Destinie) was extended in 2011 to elderly disability, in preparation for a reform of the funding of elderly disability in France. Microsimulation at the individual level allows to take into account expected changes in the distribution of variables that influence the process under study. It also allows to simulate allowances based on complex, non-linear scales that require calculation at the individual level. This document describes the implementation method and the results of the forecasts. First, on the characteristics of the disabled elderly and presence of caregivers. Then, several alternative scenarios are studied and yield a range of estimates of the future cost of the allowance for elderly disability, ranging from 0.54% of GDP in the most optimistic scenario to 0.71% of GDP in the most pessimistic one. |
| Keywords: | Microsimulation, forecasts, elderly disability, APA |
| JEL: | I18 H51 J14 C53 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crs:wpdeee:g2012-10&r=age |
| By: | Fabio C. Bagliano (Department of Economics and Statistics (Dipartimento di Scienze Economico-Sociali e Matematico-Statistiche), University of Torino, Italy); Carolina Fugazza (Department of Economics, University of Milan-Bicocca); Giovanna Nicodano (Department of Economics and Statistics (Dipartimento di Scienze Economico-Sociali e Matematico-Statistiche), University of Torino, Italy) |
| Abstract: | Household portfolios include risky bonds, beyond stocks, and respond to permanent labour income shocks. This paper brings these features into a life-cycle setting, and shows that optimal stock investment is constant or increasing in age before retirement for realistic parameter combinations. The driver of such inversion in the life-cycle profile is the resolution of uncertainty regarding social security pension, which increases the investor's risk appetite. This occurs if a small positive contemporaneous correlation between permanent labour income shocks and stock returns is matched by a realistically high variance of such shocks and/or risk aversion. Absent this combination, the typical downward sloping profile obtains. Overlooking differences in optimal investment profiles across heterogeneous workers results in large welfare losses, in the order of 17-26% of lifetime consumption. |
| Keywords: | Life-cycle portfolio choice, background risk, age rule, investor heterogeneity, stock market participation |
| JEL: | G11 D91 |
| Date: | 2012–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tur:wpapnw:12&r=age |
| By: | Marco Fuscaldo |
| Abstract: | Although health has always been a multidimensional concept, the research on older peoplefs health has been mostly focused on specific dimension or disease, studied one at a time. The present work aims at understanding the complex associations among different indicators of older peoplefs un]health in Italy. In order to reach this purpose, the work uses the Italian panel of the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and explores the associations among a wide range of indicators of health problems by applying a series of Confirmative Factor Analysis. Differences between men and women and between a numbers of age groups of old people are systematically scrutinized. Finally, a SEM is carried out in order to map the inter]relations of the retained un]health dimensions across time. The preferred representation of the data is a nested model that identified one global factor, which related to all manifest indicators, and four residual factors that measured the specific experiences of physical impairment, cognitive problems, affective suffering and motivational difficulties. The findings confirm the invariance of the proposed nested latent structure across time and improve our understanding about how health dimensions are connected over time. |
| Keywords: | health |
| JEL: | I14 J14 |
| Date: | 2012–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mod:cappmo:0098&r=age |
| By: | Thomas Lalime; Pierre-Carl Michaud |
| Abstract: | Dans cet article, nous démontrons, en utilisant des données de l’Enquête canadienne sur les capacités financières, que le Québec tire de l’arrière par rapport au reste du Canada non seulement en termes de niveau de littératie financière et d’éducation financière, mais aussi en termes d’épargne et de préparation à la retraite. Nous analysons la possibilité que ces différences soient expliquées par des différences socioéconomiques et explorons la possibilité que des spécificités institutionnelles telles que la prépondérance des régimes de retraite d’employeur à prestations déterminées au Québec puisse expliquer ces différences. |
| Keywords: | Littératie financière, préparation à la retraite, épargne |
| JEL: | D12 D14 H31 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lvl:lacicr:1237&r=age |