Mixing Bismarck and child pension systems: an optimum taxation approach

Pensions with a strong tax–benefit link (Bismarck pensions) minimise the labour–leisure distortion of the public pension system. By contrast, pensions with a strong link of benefits to the number of children (child pensions) minimise the fertility distortion. When both types of distortion are present, we obtain a Corlett–Hague result regarding the optimal mix of the two pension formulae: the Bismack pension should be given a positive weight if and only if children are more complementary to leisure than consumption. Alternative fertility instruments such as child benefits turn out to be perfect substitutes to a child pension.     

Growth and unemployment in an OLG economy with public pensions

This paper develops an overlapping generations model including (1) a productive externality as an engine of endogenous growth and (2) wage setting by trade unions as the cause of unemployment. Within this framework, the paper considers growth and unemployment affected by public pensions under the following two types of pension system: the proportionate pension system where only the contributors, that is, the employed, receive pensions, and the lump-sum pension system where both the employed and the unemployed receive pensions. It is shown that public pensions create a trade-off between growth and employment in the former system, whereas they produce no trade-off in the latter.     

Pension reform, employment by age, and long-run growth

We study the effects of pension reform on hours worked by three active generations, education of the young, the retirement decision of older workers, and aggregate growth in a four-period OLG model. The model explains important facts well for many OECD countries. Our simulation results prefer an intelligent pay-as-you-go system above a fully funded private system. Positive effects on employment and growth are the strongest when the pay-as-you-go system includes a tight link between individual labor income and the pension, and when it attaches a high weight to labor income earned as an older worker to compute the pension assessment base.     

Welfare Regimes for Aging Populations: No Single Path for Reform

We consider recent trends in pension policies in OECD countries in light of demographic aging associated with welfare regime type (Liberal, Social Democratic, Continental, and Southern European). These regime types represent different responsibilities assumed for social security on the part of the market, the state, and the family. While there are significant differences in labor market characteristics, the demographic similarities in aging bring similar pressures for pension reforms across OECD countries. These reforms address fiscal issues in state pensions, typically by increasing the length of the working life, placing more of the pension responsibility on individuals, or converting to defined‐contribution approaches. Our study shows that there is no single path for pension reform. While there are some variations, welfare states tend to follow their traditional paths, which differ across welfare regime types.     

养老保险现收现付制的挤出效应——一个内生生育率模型

文章在一个内生经济增长的OLG模型框架下研究现收现付制养老保险计划的挤出效应。具体考察公共养老金税率变动对家庭的消费与储蓄、生育选择以及经济增长的长期影响。结果表明，存在向上利他动机的情况下，挤出效应的大小取决于养老基金的规模，适度规模的公共养老金计划不会挤出私人储蓄。而有利于消费增加与经济增长；较大规模的公共养老金计划会对私人自愿储蓄与消费产生负面影响，并且对储蓄的挤出作用要大于对消费的挤出。人口老龄化进程在一定程度上缓解挤出效应，促进资本积累与经济增长。     

Who Wins and Who Loses? Public Transfer Accounts for US Generations Born 1850 to 2090

Public transfer programs in industrial countries are thought to benefit the elderly through pension and health care programs at the expense of the young and future generations. This intergenerational picture changes, however, if public education is also considered as a transfer program. We calculate the net present value at birth of benefits received minus taxes paid for US generations born 1850 to 2090. Surprisingly, all generations 1950 to 2050 are net gainers, while many current elderly are net losers. Windfall gains from starting Social Security and Medicare partially offset windfall losses from starting public education, roughly consistent with the arguments of Becker and Murphy.     

The intergenerational education spillovers of pension reform in China

Economic theory establishes that pension privatization weakens the link between old and young and so reduces the incentive to invest in public education in an economy with lower return rate of capital than growth rate of wage. However, empirical studies of the link change are few. In this paper, we investigate the effects of pension privatization and the central government’s subsidy to individual accounts on public education spending in a three-period overlapping generation model. And then, we take contemporary pension reforms in a number of Chinese provinces as offering natural experiment conditions. Using a difference-in-difference framework and 282 municipal districts panel data over years 1998–2009, we test the pension-education theoretical link change. Both our theoretical and empirical results confirm that pension privatization is adversely associated with local public spending on education in China. Private pension subsidies, moreover, magnify this effect. Our study supports the theoretical assertion and selective empirical findings of a negative intergenerational effect of pension privatization.     

中国新企业年金替代率测算及其敏感性分析

企业年金在多支柱养老保险体系中发挥着越来越重要的作用。企业年金替代率是企业养老保险的一个重要指标。本文构建了一个测算企业年金替代率的现金流平衡模型。基于现金流平衡模型,我们对影响企业年金替代率的诸因素进行了敏感性分析。不同于大多数的以往研究方法,我们应用三状态Markov转换模型分析了年金基金投资收益率的长期走势。研究表明,逐步延长退休年龄或提供投资收益可以提高企业年金替代率。因此,应通过实施弹性退休制,改善企业年金资产的投资环境,实施更多的税收优惠政策,以及其他配套措施,以促进我国企业年金的可持续发展。     

Fertility-related pensions and cyclical instability

In this paper, we study a general equilibrium model with overlapping generations, endogenous fertility and public pensions. By assuming Cobb–Douglas technology and logarithmic preferences, we show that the introduction of a fertility-related component in the pay-as-you-go pension scheme may destabilise the long-term equilibrium and cause endogenous fluctuations when individuals have static expectations. The possibility of cyclical instability increases (resp. reduces) when both the subjective discount factor and relative weight of individual fertility in pay-as-you-go pensions (resp. the parents’ taste for children) increase(s). Interestingly, when public pensions are contingent on the individual number of children, the financing of small-sized benefits may cause the occurrence of a flip bifurcation, two-period cycles and cycles of a higher order. In addition, we show through numerical simulations that these results hold in a more general setting with a constant inter-temporal elasticity of substitution utility function and a constant elasticity of substitution production function. Our findings identify a possible novel factor responsible for persistent deterministic fluctuations in a context of overlapping generations, while also representing a policy warning regarding the destabilising effects of fertility-related pension reforms, which are currently high in both the theoretical debate and the political agendas of several developed countries.     

Private versus public old-age security

We directly compare two institutions, a family compact—a parent makes a transfer to her parent in anticipation of a possible future gift from her children—with a pay-as-you-go, public pension system, in a life cycle model with endogenous fertility wherein children are valued both as consumption and investment goods. Absent intragenerational heterogeneity, we show that a benevolent government has no welfare justification for introducing public pensions alongside thriving family compacts since the former is associated with inefficiently low fertility. This result hinges critically on a fiscal externality—the inability of middle age agents to internalize the impact of their fertility decisions on old-age transfers under a public pension system. With homogeneous agents, a strong-enough negative aggregate shock to middle-age incomes destroys all family compacts, and in such a setting, an optimal public pension system cannot enter. This suggests the raison d’être for social security must lie outside of its function as a pension system—specifically its redistributive function which emerges with heterogeneous agents. In a simple modification of our benchmark model—one that allows for idiosyncratic frictions to compact formation such as differences in infertility/mating status—a welfare-enhancing role for a public pension system emerges; such systems may flourish even when family compacts cannot.     

A note on intergenerational risk sharing and the design of pay-as-you-go pension programs

Different versions of pay-as-you-go public pension programs may have entirely different effects on the intergenerational distribution of income risk. If the pension benefit is a fixed proportion of previous labor income, a pay-as-you-go program increases the net income risk of all generations. On the other hand, a pay-as-you-go program characterized by a fixed labor income tax rate and uncertain pension benefits provides intergenerational risk sharing. Received: 10 December 1996 / Accepted: 24 November 1997     

First Exits from the Swedish Labor Market Due to Disability

Nowadays, with an increasingly aging population, an increasing proportion of the population on disability benefits, and an implicitly lower level of economic output and foregone tax revenue, disability has become a major public policy issue in many countries. Estimating both single risk and competing risks models on a Swedish longitudinal database, this study analyzes the risk of exit from the labor market due to disability at a certain age, conditional on having remained in the labor force until that age. The explanatory variables did not have identical coefficients across destination types. For example, the estimated single risk model shows that a higher level of education decreased the hazard of exiting the labor market with a disability pension, while the estimated competing risks model suggests that a higher level of education increased the hazard of exiting with a partial disability pension, but it decreased the hazard of exiting with a full disability pension.

Pension reform and labor market incentives

This paper investigates how parametric reform in a pay-as-you-go pension system with a tax–benefit link affects retirement and work incentives of prime-age workers. We find that postponed retirement tends to harm incentives of prime-age workers in the presence of a tax–benefit link, thereby creating a policy trade-off in stimulating aggregate labor supply. We show how several popular reform scenarios are geared either towards young or old workers or, indeed, both groups under appropriate conditions. We characterize the excess burden of pension insurance and show how it depends on the supply elasticities of both decision margins and the effective tax rates.     

美国社会保障退休金确定机制——方法、特点与启示

养老金待遇确定机制是公共养老金制度的核心内容之一。从三个方面系统研究了美国社会保障退休金确定机制:在退休年龄方面,实现了劳动关系和社会保障关系的相对分离,通过引入“全额领取年龄”建立了“早减晚增”式初始退休金调节机制;在计算办法方面,建立了基于个体的、全国统一的基本保险金额计算办法,并通过分级加权实现了收入再分配和减少老年贫困等功能;在待遇调整方面,建立了基于生活成本调整的退休金指数化自动调整机制。立足我国基本养老保险制度实践、借鉴美国退休金制度设计经验,本文认为我国基本养老保险待遇确定机制改革的方向是引入较为宽松灵活的退休政策、待遇计发与全国性指标挂钩以促进全国统筹和制度公平、增强待遇计发对参保和缴费行为的激励作用、尽快建立科学合理的待遇调整机制。     

中国养老公共服务供给研究

随着我国人口老龄化问题的加剧,养老公共服务的供需矛盾日益突出。我国养老公共服务供给体系由物质性保障供给和非物质性保障供给两大系统构成,研究表明,我国养老公共服务供给水平较低、总体规模增长缓慢。2010年17项养老公共服务评价指标中,有8项指标呈现负增长状态,其中社区从业人员数量出现较大幅度下降,表明我国养老公共服务从业人员的匮乏。将60岁及以上的各省老年人口总数作为需求总体,通过构造养老公共服务供给的综合指数,可以分析我国养老公共服务的省际差异。我国养老公共服务供给水平的省际差异显著,西部落后省份的供给能力严重不足。养老公共服务供给问题已经成为中国面临的一个重要社会问题,构建一个公共服务型政府、建立健全社会养老公共服务制度是未来发展的方向。     

中国新企业年金替代率研究

企业年金在多支柱养老保险体系中发挥着越来越重要的作用。企业年金替代率是企业养老保险的一个重要指标。本文构建了一个测算企业年金替代率的现金流平衡模型。基于现金流平衡模型,我们对影响企业年金替代率的诸因素进行了敏感性分析。不同于大多数的以往研究方法,我们应用三状态Markov转换模型分析了年金基金投资收益率的走势。研究表明,延长退休年龄或提供投资收益可以提高企业年金替代率。因此,必须通过改善企业年金资产的投资环境,实施更多的税收优惠政策,以及其他措施,为促进企业年金发展创造一个良好的外部环境。     

Population Aging and the Rising Cost of Public Pensions

Rapid population aging is raising concerns about the sustainability of public pension systems in high‐income countries. The first part of this study identifies the four factors that determine trends in public pension expenditures: population aging, pension benefit levels, the mean age at retirement, and the labor force participation rate. The second part presents projections to 2050 of the impact of demographic trends on public pension expenditures in the absence of changes in pension benefits, labor force participation, and age at retirement. These projections demonstrate that current trends are unsustainable, because without reforms population aging will produce an unprecedented and harmful accumulation of public debt. A number of projection variants assess the potential impact of policy options aimed at improving the sustainability of public pension systems. Although the conventional responses are considered, particular attention is given to the demographic options of encouraging higher fertility and permitting more immigration. This analysis is illustrated with data from the seven largest OECD countries.     

养老金性别差异影响因素分析——以上海城镇“老人”为例

为了了解养老金性别差异的影响因素及各因素的影响程度，通过对2003年上海市老年人口状况与意愿跟踪调查原始数据的多元线性回归分析，本研究发现：．女性城镇“老人”在受教育年限、退休年龄和退休前职业等方面较男性城镇“老人”均处于劣势：不同特征女性城镇“老人”养老金整体上低于男性城镇“老人”：退休年龄和受教育年限对养老金的性别差异有较强的解释力；退休年份越晚，养老金的性别差异由退休年龄和受教育年限解释的比重越高。     

Assessing the efficiency of public education and pensions

Theory says that, in an overlapping-generations context, intergenerational transfer agreements are efficient if they induce equality between certain implicit rates of return. We apply this theory to the case of public education and pensions, where public education is interpreted as a loan from middle age to young, and pensions are the repayment of this loan, plus interest, from middle age to old. We use micro- and macrodata from Spain to estimate how far actual arrangements are from the normative goal. When demographic stationarity is assumed, efficiency appears reachable. When demographic change is accounted for, efficiency is far from being achieved. Nevertheless, and contrary to earlier predictions in the generational accounting literature, our findings suggest that future generations may not necessarily be worse off than current ones.      

The Influence of Social Models on Retirement Savings: Evidence for European Countries

Population ageing, together with the negative effects of the recent economic and financial crisis that some European countries are still facing, have threatened the sustainability of public pension systems. In this context, voluntary private pensions have emerged as the most feasible alternative to supplement the minimum provided by Social Security Systems; however, this financial product does not enjoy its expected popularity. A potential explanation of this reality might be due to the fact that European countries are far from being homogeneous, nor their pensions systems. Therefore, any policy geared toward improving financial retirement planning should take into account these potential differences. As a first approach to their analysis, this paper proposes the existence of four different ‘social models’ in Europe -namely, Continental, Mediterranean, Nordic and Transitional-. Overall, empirical evidence confirmed the significant influence of country’ ‘social model’ on the decision to invest in retirement accounts on a sample of 31,468 individuals in 2013. It was also proved that this decision is positively related to age, household income and wealth, higher levels of formal education, job situation, good health status, and long-term planning horizons; and negatively related to age squared, household size or financial risk aversion. In short, future policies and reforms regarding private pensions should not only take into account the existence of individual differences among Europeans, but also the existence of differences depending on institutional and cultural country factors.