Although contractual mandatory retirement at a specified age has been eliminated, or limited, in many Western nations, the practice remains widespread in other parts of the world. In South Korea (henceforth, Korea) most workers are subject to contractual mandatory retirement, often while still...

The distribution of income among seniors in Canada has changed substantially over the past decade, reflecting an overall increase in income and an increase in income inequality. In this study I decompose the distribution of income among senior couples to determine the extent to which changes in...

As governments around the world struggle to reign in ballooning public deficits, one area that has been targeted for cost savings has been to increase the age of eligibility for retirement benefits. In Canada, the March 2012 federal budget announced plans to make a transition in the age of...

Using 1977-1979, 1994-1996, and 2006-2008 data from the SCF and SLID, a decomposition analysis of senior poverty rates is conducted to determine whether changes in seniors’ characteristics, and changes in the extent to which characteristics affect senior’s likelihood of poverty,...

This study uses data from the Statistics Canada Longitudinal Databank (the LAD) to address three general questions: (1) How great is the average drop in the level of total income after retirement? (2) What is the composition of income in retirement, and how does it change? and (3) What impact do...

La sécurité du revenu chez les personnes âgées au Canada est un défi en croissance pour les responsables des politiques. On assiste à un déclin significatif des retraites complémentaires (du secteur privé) et, dans les vingt dernières années, à un important changement de cap dans la...

In this paper, we use a risk framework to analyze the risks seniors face and discuss the success of Canada’s retirement income system in insuring against these risks. We focus on four types of risk: (i) the risk of low income at the onset of retirement, (ii) longevity risk, (iii) business...

The income security of retired Canadians has become an increasing challenge for Canadian policy makers. There has been a significant decline in the coverage of workplace pensions in the private sector and a dramatic shift in the structuring of private-sector pensions away from defined-benefit...

Bien des gouvernements dans le monde entier luttent pour contenir leurs déficits publics qui gonflent, et l’un des domaines ciblés pour économiser a été d’augmenter l’âge de la disponibilité aux prestations de pension. Au Canada, le budget fédéral de mars 2012 a annoncé des...

We study the propensity of disabled persons to engage in volunteer activity with the Participation and Activity Limitation Survey (PALS) -- a unique Canadian dataset which provides extensive information on disabled persons as well as volunteering behaviour. Our principal focus is on the effects...