Like most other developed nations, Canada has a large income security system for retirement that provides significant and widely varying disincentives to work at older ages. Empirical investigation of their effects has been hindered by lack of appropriate data. We provide an empirical analysis...

Post-war policies and subsequent debates had two policy targets: reducing old-age poverty and enhancing income security for the “average worker” after retirement. While we know a lot about the first issue, the second has received less attention as a result of data limitations. We take...

By all measures the private pension system in Canada is in difficulty. One estimate suggests that at the end of 2005 there were significant funding shortfalls in about three quarters of the traditional defined benefit pension plans that fall under federal jurisdiction in Canada. In order to...

This article argues that welfare state restructuring, which is highly unpopular among voters, is politically feasible if government and opposition parties collude informally with each other. Contrary to key arguments made in the literature, restructuring does not require the formation of a...

This paper examines variation in old-age income inequality between industrialized nations with modern welfare systems. The analysis of income inequality across countries with different retirement income systems provides a perspective on public pension policy choices and designs and their...

This article explores President George W. Bush's "ownership society" blueprint in comparative and historical perspective. By taking the "ownership society" seriously, it is possible to understand how it is deeply rooted in the American cultural repertoire, and how it offers a coherent...

This article argues that an increase of the retirement age from 65 years to 67 or higher, which is the most unpopular pension reform measure, is politically feasible if the major parties build either a formal or an informal grand coalition. It argues further that institutional rules and agreed...

In Canada, there are three main sources of government-provided retirement income: the Canada/Quebec Pension Plans (C/QPP), which have benefits and contributions based on earnings up to the Yearly Maximum Pensionable Earnings; Old Age Security (OAS), which is a fixed amount for most but does...

Within the 65+ age group, the percentage of labour market income received by the top 1% of earners has increased from about 30% in 1982 to more than 60% in 2002. The trend is smooth, is roughly uniform across provinces and does not appear to have been accelerated by top marginal tax rate...

The purpose of this paper is to examine what key reform attempts during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies reveal about the wider possibilities for social policy change in the United States. Most particularly, why were Presidents Clinton and Bush able to achieve their goals in some...