Pension reforms in many developed countries make individuals shoulder a bigger share of longevity and income risks. The desired response is that individuals accumulate private assets for retirement. ...Whether this actually takes place, is of paramount relevance for scientists and policy makers. We take Germany as an example: Twenty years of pension reform have transformed the monolithic German pension system into a multipillar system. Formerly generous public pension benefits are gradually being reduced, whereas substantial incentives are granted to occupational and private saving schemes. Has this transition worked out? We survey the reform steps and households’ reactions: How did individuals adjust their labor market behavior? How did private and occupational pension plans take off? How do behavioral adjustments vary in the population? Most Germans adapted to the new situation. Both actual and expected retirement decisions changed and the share of households without supplementary pensions decreased from 73% to 39% in little more than a decade. This is a remarkable success. Nonetheless, households with low education, low income and less financial education did neither adjust their retirement behavior nor pick up supplementary pension plans and are thus likely to face difficulties in bridging the gap arising in future pension income.
INTRODUCTION
The apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 allele is associated with high risk for Alzheimer's disease. It is unclear whether individual levels of the circulating apoE4 protein in ε4 carriers confer ...additional risk. Measuring apoE4 protein levels from dried blood spots (DBS) has the potential to provide information on genetic status as well as circulating levels and to include these measures in large survey settings.
METHODS
We developed a multiplex immunoassay to detect apoE4 protein levels in DBS from 15,974 participants, aged 50+ from Wave 6 of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).
RESULTS
The apoE4 protein signal was presented in two separable distributions. One distribution corresponded to carriers of at least one copy of the ε4 allele. Fieldwork cofounders affected protein levels but did not explain individual differences.
DISCUSSION
Future research should investigate how genotype and apoE4 level interact with lifestyle and other variables to impact cognitive aging.
Pension economics has traditionally guided pension policy with the help of formal models based on individuals who think in a life‐cycle context with perfect foresight, full information, and in a ...time‐consistent manner. Associated macro models were mostly based on a single country. This paper sheds light on several aspects of pension economics when these assumptions do not hold using—to our knowledge—the first multi‐country model of procrastinating households. Our focus is on the interaction between the share of procrastinators in a country, the speed and extent of population aging, and the size of an existing PAYG‐DB pension system. Starting from the insight that procrastination reduces the volume of savings, we focus on three questions that are particularly relevant for the quickly aging Asian economies: What are the consequences for the balance between pay‐as‐you‐go and fully funded pension systems? Where will retirement savings be invested in a globally linked world with very different pension systems and demographics? How large are global spillover effects of pension reforms in one region for the other regions in the world?
Population ageing and pension reform will have profound effects on international capital markets. In order to quantify these effects, we develop a computational general equilibrium model. We feed ...this multi-country overlapping-generations model with detailed long-term demographic projections for seven world regions. Our simulations indicate that capital flows from rapidly ageing regions to the rest of the world will initially be substantial, but that trends are reversed when households decumulate savings. We also conclude that closed-economy models of pension reform miss quantitatively important effects of international capital mobility.
ObjectiveTo estimate the effects of repeat assessments, rater and time of day on mobility measures and to estimate their variation between and within participants in a population-based sample of ...Irish adults aged ≥50 years.DesignTest–retest study in a population representative sample.SettingAcademic health assessment centre of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA).Participants128 community-dwelling adults from the Survey for Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) Ireland study who agreed to take part in the SHARE-Ireland/TILDA collaboration.InterventionsNot applicable.Outcome measuresParticipants performed timed up-and-go (TUG), repeated chair stands (RCS) and walking speed tests administered by one of two raters. Repeat assessments were conducted 1–4 months later. Participants were randomised with respect to a change in time (morning, afternoon) and whether the rater was changed between assessments. Within and between-participant variance for each measure was estimated using mixed-effects models. Intraclass correlation (ICC), SE of measurement and minimum detectable change (MDC) were reported.ResultsAverage performance did not vary between baseline and repeat assessments in any test, except RCS. The rater significantly affected performance on all tests except one, but time of day did not. Reliability varied from ICC=0.66 (RCS) to ICC=0.88 (usual gait speed). MDC was 2.08 s for TUG, 4.52 s for RCS and ranged from 19.49 to 34.73 cm/s for walking speed tests. There was no evidence for lower reliability of gait parameters with increasing time between assessments.ConclusionsReliability varied for each test when measurements are obtained over 1–4 months with most variation due to rater effects. Usual and motor dual task gait speed demonstrated highest reliability.
Targeting is an important aim of social policy. Three case studies in this paper reflect typical short-comings in the targeting design of pension reforms. The first case study examines how well work ...disability and receipt of disability insurance match in Germany. We show that the 2001 reform has not systematically improved target quality. The second case study examines whether the 2014 introduction of a new pathway of early retirement without actuarial adjustments has reached individuals who are less healthy because they have worked a long time in an arduous job. We find that the target population is actually healthier than the comparison group. Third, a much discussed supplemental pension benefit for households in the risk of poverty will miss its target population in both relevant directions: Regarding the first, 23% of those pensioners who are not eligible are nevertheless poor in the sense of the new law. Regarding the other direction, 21% of the eligible pensioners belong to the wealthier half of German pensioners. Since similar reforms are currently debated in many European countries, the three German case studies may serve as examples of how to better target public pension policies.
Background: Given the challenge of a high proportion of older employees who retire early from work we analyse associations of indicators of a poor psychosocial quality of work with intended premature ...departure from work in a large sample of older male and female employees in 10 European countries. Methods: Baseline data from the ‘Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe’ (SHARE) were obtained from 3523 men and 3318 women in 10 European countries. Data on intended early retirement, four measures of well-being (self-rated health, depressive symptoms, general symptom load, and quality of life), and quality of work (effort–reward imbalance; low control at work) were obtained from structured interviews and questionnaires. Country-specific and total samples are analysed, using logistic regression analysis. Results: Poor quality of work is significantly associated with intended early retirement. After adjustment for well-being odds ratios (OR) of effort–reward imbalance OR 1.72 (1.43–2.08) and low control at work OR 1.51 (1.27–1.80) on intended early retirement are observed. Poor quality of work and reduced well-being are independently associated with the intention to retire from work. Conclusion: The consistent association of a poor psychosocial quality of work with intended early retirement among older employees across all European countries under study calls for improved investments into better quality of work, in particular increased control and an appropriate balance between efforts spent and rewards received at work.
Flexible retirement is supposed to increase labour supply of older workers without touching the third rail of pension politics, the highly unpopular increase of the retirement age. While this may ...have intuitive appeal, this paper shows that it might be wishful thinking. Economic theory tells us that flexible retirement policies can have a zero or positive effect on labour force participation (LFP) while the effect on hours worked can be positive or negative depending on the distribution of leisure preferences. Thus, the overall effect is ex ante unclear. Empirical results from nine OECD countries show that the effect on LFP is ex post small and positive while the effect on hours worked is negative. Overall, there is no evidence of the desired positive effect on total labour supply (TLS). We conclude that the flexibility reforms enacted so far are dangerous instruments if one wants to increase TLS because they postpone or even replace the instalment of more effective policies and may, even worse, reduce total labour volume.
What governs labour force participation in later life and why is it so different across countries? Health and labour force participation in older ages are not strongly linked, but we observe a large ...variation across countries in old-age labour force participation. This points to the important role of country-specific regulations governing pension receipt and old-age labour force participation. In addition to the statutory eligibility age for a pension, such country-specific regulations include: earnings tests that limit the amount of earnings when pension benefits are received; the amount of benefit deductions for early retirement; the availability of part-time pensions before normal retirement; special regulations that permit early retirement for certain population groups; and either subsidies or extra costs for employers if they keep older employees in their labour force. This paper asks two questions: Can we link a relatively low labour force participation at ages 60–64 to country-specific regulations that make early retirement attractive? and Can we link a relatively high labour force participation at ages 65–74 to country-specific regulations that make late retirement attractive? To answer these questions, we compared the experiences in a set of developed countries around the world in order to understand better the impact of country-specific rules and laws on work and retirement behaviour at older ages and, by consequence, on the financial sustainability of pension systems.
SHARE-RV: Linked Data to Study Aging in Germany Börsch-Supan, Axel; Czaplicki, Christin; Friedel, Sabine ...
Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik,
01/2020, Letnik:
240, Številka:
1
Trade Publication Article, Journal Article
PDF
