|
on Economics of Ageing |
| By: | Blake, Hélène; Garrouste, Clémentine |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of the retirement age and working life on mortality over 64 years old. In 1993, the French government gradually increased incentives to work for seniors. This exogenous shock on labor supply is an instrument for retirement choices of French pensioners. We use this exogenous shock to measure how work impacts male mortality. We work on the Echantillon Interrégime des Retraités, an administrative panel data set which provides information on past contribution to the pension system and mortality at two points of time. We find that delaying the retirement age by one year increases the chances of dying within four years by 2.45 percentage points which is equivalent to a decrease of life expectancy at age 64 by around 2.6 months. However, this effect is far from homogeneous if we split our sample by income groups. |
| Keywords: | Retirement; mortality; pension reform; |
| JEL: | J12 J26 H55 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dau:papers:123456789/12127&r=age |
| By: | Oliveira Martins, Joaquim; El Mekkaoui de Freitas, Najat |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the impact of health, pension systems and longevity on savings. It uses a simple life-cycle model embodying social transfers (health care and pension expenditures) and changes in longevity to determine the level of household savings. From this model, we derived an econometric specification, augmented with the effects of public budget balances. The model is estimated for a panel of 22 OECD countries for the period 1970-2009. Our principal result is that, from the point of view of incentive to save, health transfers have a similar impact as pension replacement rates. Therefore, welfare reforms that reduce replacement rates without reforming health system may not have all the expected impact on household savings. In line with life-cycle theory, we found that longevity increases saving ratios. |
| Keywords: | Ageing; consumption; health; longevity; pension systems; saving; |
| JEL: | D91 I13 J1 J11 J26 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dau:papers:123456789/12130&r=age |
| By: | Elenka Brenna (Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore); Cinzia Di Novi (Università Ca’ Foscari, Dipartimento di Economia, Venezia) |
| Abstract: | In the last decades, both the lengthening of life expectancy and an accentuated decline in birth rates have reduced the consistency of the younger generational cohorts. Due to an ageing population, the burden of care giving is expected to intensify in the next quarter of the century in Europe, especially for mature women. This paper investigates the impact of the provision of constant care for elderly parents on the mental health of adult daughters, between the ages of 50 and 65, living in different European countries. Data is collected from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Information on mental health status is provided by Euro-D depression scale, a standardized measure of depression employed across European countries. We focus on differences in the effects according to a North–South gradient: we test whether the relationship between informal caregiving and mental health differs across European macro- regions. Our results reveal the presence of a North-South gradient in the effect of caring on women’s mental health. |
| Keywords: | caregiver burden, depression, parent care, LTC systems, mature women |
| JEL: | I10 I12 D10 |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctc:serie1:def4&r=age |
| By: | Joshua Rauh; Irina Stefanescu; Stephen Zeldes |
| Abstract: | Many U.S. corporations have frozen defined benefit (DB) pension plans, replacing new DB promises with contributions to defined contribution (DC) plans. We estimate expected DB accruals from the age-service and salary distributions of a large sample of U.S. corporate pension plans with more than 1,000 employees. Comparing the counterfactual DB accruals to the actual increase in 401(k) and other DC contributions for firms that freeze, we find only partial compensation to employees for the lost DB accruals. Net of the increase in total DC contributions, firms save 2.7-3.6% of payroll per year, and over a 10-year horizon they save 3.1% of total firm assets. Workers would have to value the structure, choice, flexibility, or portability of DC plans by at least this much more to experience welfare gains from freezes. The forgone accruals and net cost effects are initially largest for older employees but over time become largest for middle-aged employees who plan to stay with the firms until retirement. Furthermore, the probability that a firm freezes a pension plan is positively related to the value of new accruals as a share of firm assets. While there are differences in the age-service distributions of firms that freeze versus those that do not, we find that the differential accrual effect is largely driven by differences in benefit factors and the relative importance of labor in the freeze firm's production function. The results overall support the hypothesis that pension freezes affect overall compensation and therefore that they change compensation costs relative to a worker's marginal product. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2013-82&r=age |
| By: | Pilar García-Gómez; Sergi Jiménez-Martín; JudiVall Castelló |
| Abstract: | In this work we combine wage data from Social Security working histories and health information available in the Survey of Health and Retirement in Europe to explore the link between health, financial incentives and retirement in Spain. Our results show that individuals in worse health quintiles are, indeed, the more responsive to financial incentives as they prove to be less likely to retire when incentives to continue working increase. |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fda:fdaddt:2013-12&r=age |
| By: | Feld, Lars P.; Kallweit, Manuel; Kohlmeier, Anabell |
| Abstract: | There is an intensive debate about old-age poverty in Germany that has induced political parties to develop proposals for higher pensions of poor pensioners in light of the federal elections of September 2013. In addition, several proposals from economists aim at reforming the pension system in a way that mitigates oldage poverty. In this paper, we consider these proposals in a computable general equilibrium model in order to derive their effects on the income distribution, on employment, on the capital stock and on GDP. Our results indicate that negative employment, capital and GDP effects are induced by such reforms as compared to the alternative of basic means-tested social welfare in old-age. Moreover, the strongest beneficiaries would be the currently higher age employees with low income and much less the respective younger employees, while younger and higher age employees with high and medium incomes will lose. -- |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:aluord:1310&r=age |
| By: | Schubert , Torben (Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) And CIRCLE, Lund University, Sweden); Andersson , Martin (CIRCLE, Lund University, Sweden and Blekinge Institute of Technology) |
| Abstract: | There is consistent evidence in the literature that average employee age is negatively related to firm-level innovativeness. This observation has been explained by older employees working with outdated technological knowledge and being characterized by reduced cognitive flexibility. We argue that firms can mitigate this effect through employee turnover. In particular turnover of R&D workers is deemed a vehicle for transfer of external knowledge to the firm, which can compensate for lower cognitive flexibility and up-to-date knowledge among older workers. We use a matched employer-employee dataset based on three consecutive CIS surveys for Sweden to test our predictions. Our results suggest a) that overall employee age impacts negatively on product innovation activities (both in terms of propensity and success), b) that the effect of em-ployee staying rate (measured by the share of employees that remain in the firm from one year to the next) on innovation follows an inverted U-shape implying an ‘optimal’ level of employment turnover, and c) that this ‘optimal’ value is lower for firms with older employees. The latter suggests that firms with older employees can at least partially compensate an aged workforce by increased employment turnover. |
| Keywords: | ageing; employee age; innovation; firm performance; R&D; human capita |
| JEL: | D22 J21 J24 L25 |
| Date: | 2013–11–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2013_029&r=age |
| By: | Ferreiray, Pedro Cavalcanti; Santos, Marcelo Rodrigues |
| Date: | 2012–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ibm:ibmecp:wpe_274&r=age |
| By: | Alessandra Caretta; Sara Flisi; Cecilia Frale; Michele Raitano; Simone Tedeschi |
| Abstract: | The long-term development of the social security system is a crucial policy issue in terms of both financial sustainability and adequacy, which constitute a difficult trade-off facing the policy maker. The particular complexity of this issue, also in the light of demographic dynamics and the recent economic crisis, has encouraged the development of dynamic microsimulation models as to analyse the distributive effects of pension reforms in the long run. This study presents T-DYMM, a dynamic microsimulation model developed within a European funded project runned by the Treasury Department of the Italian Ministry of the Economy and Finance in collaboration with the Fondazione G. Brodolini. The distinct character of T-DYMM compared to other models is, above all, its innovative dataset, Ad-SILC, which includes microdata needed to estimate conditional probabilities of transitions across alternative employment states and parameters of wage equations. The estimated coefficient are then used to simulate transition probabilities in T-DYMM and wage dynamics, taking into account fragile careers. A number of simulations are presented on the distributive effects related to the latest legislative changes affecting the Italian pension system. To better exploit adequacy concerns, replacement rates are shown after personal income taxation, long run poverty rates are projected as well as trends of beneficiaries of social assistance allowance and minimum pension supplement as a ratio of total pensioners. |
| Keywords: | Dynamic Microsimulation, Pensions, Job transitions, Distributive analysis |
| JEL: | C1 C53 H23 H55 J24 J26 |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:itt:wpaper:2013-11&r=age |
| By: | Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes (San Diego State University); Laura Juarez (Banco de Mexico) |
| Abstract: | We estimate the crowding out of private transfers caused by 70 y Más –a public assistance program for the rural elderly in Mexico for whom family support is an important source of income. Using data from the Mexican Income and Expenditure Survey and a triple difference approach, we find that the program crowds out private gifts by 37 percent, and it does so mostly by reducing the probability of receiving domestic remittances. As a result, the non-labor income of beneficiaries increases by less than their government transfers. Thus, by reducing their private support to the elderly, domestic donors are dampening the effect of the program, although not completely neutralizing it. |
| JEL: | H3 H55 J14 J18 |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:1327&r=age |
| By: | Gudmundur S. Gudmundsson (Universitat Pompeu Fabra); Gylfi Zoega (Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics, Birkbeck; University of Iceland) |
| Abstract: | We adjust current account surpluses and deficits of 57 countries in the period 2005-2009 for differences in the age structure of their populations and find that these differences can account for a significant part of the variation in the data. Among the large countries we find that the adjustment increases the surpluses of Germany and Japan while the surpluses of China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia are significantly diminished. |
| Keywords: | Current account, age structure, life-cycle saving behavior. |
| JEL: | J1 E2 |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bbk:bbkefp:1307&r=age |
| By: | Bonin, Holger; Patxot, Concepció; Souto, Guadalupe |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces a methodological innovation into Generational Accounting. By incorporating cyclically-adjusted balances into the forward-looking budget projections underlying the concept we isolate pure policy effects, which render comparisons of the fiscal sustainability indicators obtained across time and countries truly meaningful. We also show that a demographic effect and a debt effect may bias fiscal sustainability measures over time, and establish a routine to control for these effects in the generational accounting framework. An empirical application for Spain illustrates that our proposed decomposition of indicators is empirically relevant. Standard generational accounting suggests that fiscal sustainability in Spain improved substantially in preparing for EMU. However, calculation of the pure policy effects reveals that this has not been the case. -- |
| Keywords: | Fiscal Sustainability,Demographic Ageing,Cyclically-Adjusted Budget Balance,Spain |
| JEL: | E62 H55 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:13099&r=age |