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     

Fertility waves,aggregate savings and the rate of interest

During the last fifty years there have in many countries been large movements in the growth of labor productivity, real wage rates, the rate of interest, and the household savings ratio. In this paper we use an overlapping generations model to study if demographic shocks, like the baby boom, can generate the kind of movements observed. Simulations show this is indeed the case. We also study the interactions between a pay-as-you-go pension system and demographic disturbances.We are grateful to Laurence Ball, Alex Cukierman and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.     

Social security, public education, and growth in a representative democracy

This paper studies the relationship between public education and pay-as-you-go social security in a representative democracy, where the government reacts both to voting and lobbying activities of workers and pensioners. While an intergenerational conflict prevails concerning actual social security contributions, workers may prefer public education for its positive effect on later pension benefits. Population aging diminishes the relative lobbying power of pensioners, leading to a higher contribution rate, educational expansion, and higher per capita income growth. Received: 05 April 1999/Accepted: 20 December 1999     

Beggar thy thrifty neighbour

This paper explores the international spillover effects of ageing through capital markets when countries have different pension systems. We use a two-country two-period overlapping-generations model, where the two countries only differ in their pension schemes. Two forms of population ageing are considered, namely, an increase in longevity and a fall in fertility. It is shown that, in the long run, a country using a funded pension system experiences negative spillovers from the fact that the other country uses a pay-as-you-go system. The short-run spillovers, however, are opposite to the spillovers in the long run.      

中国养老保险隐性债务显性化研究

养老保险隐性债务是现收现付制养老金制度的固有特征;养老保险隐性债务的显性化问题是源于现收现付制养老保险向基金制的转轨。养老保险制度的转轨成本源于隐性债务,但在量上并不等于隐性债务,只有在制度转轨过程中显性化出来的那部分隐性债务才是转轨成本。中国养老保险制度改革的目标是部分基金制,因而只是部分旧制度下的隐性债务会显性化。隐性债务的显性化是一个复杂的动态变化过程,作者用系统动力学的方法进行模拟测算,得出中国未来各期的政府清偿隐性债务的估测量值,以供决策部门参考。     

Intergenerational redistribution in a small open economy with endogenous fertility

For pay-as-you-go financed pension systems, claims may be calculated according to individual contributions (income) or the number of children of a family. We analyse the optimal structure of these parameters in a model with endogenous fertility. It is shown that for both structural determinants there exists no interior solution of the problem of intragenerational utility maximisation. Thus, pure systems are always welfare maximizing. Furthermore, children-related pension claims induce a fiscal externality that tends to be positive. The determination of the optimal contribution rate shows that the widely accepted Aaron-condition is in general a misleading indicator for the comparison of fully funded and pay-as-you-go financed pension systems. Received March 12, 1996 / Accepted January 27, 1997     

Population aging and PAYG pensions in the OLG model

This paper shows the effects on a pay-as-you-go pension system of the demographic change in the standard overlapping generations model. Firstly, we consider a setting with exogenous fertility and then a model with endogenous fertility. In both cases, population aging due to increased longevity implies a reduction in pensions payouts.     

人口老龄化、老年贫困与养老保障--基于德国的数据与经验

人口老龄化及老年女性比重较高增加了老年贫困的概率。对此,德国主要采取两项对策避免老年贫困：养老保障是第一道防线,里斯特／吕鲁普养老金、最低养老金等都是重要的政策选项;社会救助提供了最后一道有效安全网。借鉴德国经验,中国应通过完善多支柱模式并逐步扩大第二支柱比重、养老保险参量改革、建立老年低收入群体收入保护机制、建立健全老年社会救助制度等措施来有效解决人口老龄化过程中老年人特别是老年低收入群体的养老保障问题,有效规避老年贫困风险。     

Pay-as-you-go social security and endogenous fertility in a neoclassical growth model

This paper theoretically studies how unfunded pay-as-you-go social security affects economic growth, the fertility rate, and welfare in a neoclassical growth model. In addition, this paper considers a more general form of child-rearing cost, which is a mixture of time and money. The first observation is that whether the fertility rate increases or not by the expansion of the pay-as-you-go social security depends on (1) the size of the monetary child-rearing cost relative to the time spent on child-rearing and (2) the current fertility and interest rate in laissez faire. The second observation is that income per worker can increase by an expansion in pay-as-you-go social security when the output elasticity of capital is sufficiently small and the payroll tax rate is high. The last finding is that welfare can be improved even though capital is underaccumulated in an economy.     

Retirement against the demographic trend: More older people living longer, working less, and saving less?

The American population is aging rapidly and individuals are living longer. Yet Americans are saving less and older workers are leaving the labor force at younger and younger ages. The accelerated drop in labor force participation corresponds roughly to the introduction of Social Security and the adaption of employer-provided pension plans. I have illustrated that Social Security and employer-provided pension plans provide substantial incentive to leave the labor force early. The quantitative effect of this inducement is illustrated by simulating the effects of changes in pension plan and Social Security provisions on the retirement decisions of employees in a large firm, who are covered by a typical defined benefit pension plan. Scheduled Social Security changes would have little effect on the retirement decisions of employees with a typical defined benefit pension plan like the one considered here. But if the pension plan provisions were changed to correspond to the Social Security changes, the effect would be very large. And, although not contemplated by current legislation, it is clear that an increase in the Social Security early retirement age would have a substantial effect on the early retirement rates of the large number of employees not covered by a pension plan.     

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.     

Effects of receipt of Social Security retirement benefits on older women’s employment

Labor force participation of women has declined since 1999; however, labor force participation of women 62+ has increased. The 2000–2006 waves of Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data, the initial years of the continuing upward trajectory, were used to test the effects of receipt of Social Security retirement benefits on older women’s employment. The models tested: (a) the effect of receipt of Social Security retirement benefits on whether employed; and (b) for women receiving Social Security retirement benefits, the effect of age elected receipt of benefits on whether employed. Both models included the effects of human capital characteristics and income sources. Receipt of Social Security benefits, pension income, and current age reduced the likelihood of employment; while educational level, good to excellent health, and nonmarried marital status increased the likelihood of employment. The older the woman was when she elected Social Security benefits, the more likely she was to be employed.     

养老保险基金模式选择的人口学分析

从人口学角度看,养老保险基金的两种基本模式——现收现付制和基金制分别表现为时期平衡和队列平衡。退休者的生活消费均来源于在职职工创造的财富,因此,不仅现收现付制,而且基金制养老保险也体现了代际之间的再分配关系。人口老龄化、劳动力人口数量、人口素质和人口迁移是影响养老保险基金模式选择的主要人口因素。我们要综合考虑人口因素和经济因素来选择我国的养老保险基金模式。     

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.     

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.     

农村养老保险制度的环境建设分析

文章认为 ,中国农村养老保险制度建设的经济环境、人口环境和政治环境基本具备 ,但农村居民的收入水平、农村居民收入水平地区差异以及农村大量剩余劳动力的存在直接制约农村居民养老保险制度的建立 ,因而政府在农村养老保险制度建立过程中 ,应从提高农村居民收入水平、加大政府财政转移支付力度和加强农村组织资源建设几个方面优化农村养老保险制度的环境     

Physical capital taxation and labor income taxation in an endogenous growth model with new generations

This paper examines the growth and welfare effects of physical capital taxation and labor income taxation. It is found that the impact of a rise in the physical capital tax rate on the balanced growth rate is crucially related to the birth rate, but a rise in the labor income tax rate definitely reduces the balanced growth rate regardless of the birth rate. It is also found that an increase in the physical capital income tax rate will harm the older but will benefit the younger, while an increase in the labor income tax rate will benefit the older but will harm the younger.

Work and Retirement Among a Cohort of Older Men in the United States, 1966–1983

Multivariate increment-decrement working life tables are estimated for a cohort of older men in the United States for the period 1966-1983. The approach taken allows multiple processes to be simultaneously incorporated into a single model, resulting in a more realistic portrayal of a cohort's late-life labor force behavior. In addition, because the life table model is developed from multivariate hazard equations, we identify the effects of sociodemographic characteristics on the potentially complex process by which the labor force career is ended. In contrast to the assumed homogeneity of previous working life table analyses, the present study shows marked differences in labor force mobility and working and nonworking life expectancy according to occupation, class of worker, education, race, and marital status. We briefly discuss the implications of these findings for inequities of access to retirement, private and public pension consumption, and future changes in the retirement process.     

The heterogeneous impact of pension income on elderly living arrangements: evidence from China’s new rural pension scheme

This paper investigates the impact of pension income on living arrangements of the elderly. Taking advantage of a unique opportunity due to the recent establishment and expansion of the New Rural Pension Scheme in China, we explicitly address the endogeneity of pension status and pension income through a fixed-effect model with instrumental variable approach by exploiting exogenous time variation in the program implementation at county level. We find an overall positive effect of pension income on independent living as well as considerable heterogeneity. The positive income effects of the NRPS are concentrated among the elderly with adult children living nearby, of higher socio-economic status, and with better health at baseline; for other groups, the effects are insignificant. We also find that more generous programs exhibit larger effects. Our results highlight that living arrangement is multidimensional in rural China.