This paper examines the impact of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) in China. Exploiting the staggered implementation of an NRPS policy expansion that began in 2009, we used a difference-in-difference approach to study the effects of the introduction of pension benefits on the health status,...

In response to a widespread perception that households are undersaving for retirement, policymakers have proposed expanding Social Security and establishing supplementary retirement saving plans run by state governments. But these proposals take place against a background of record-high unfunded...

I exploit unanticipated reforms to the Texas Teacher's pension plan to estimate the effect of pension incentives on retirement decisions. In 2000 and 2002 the Teacher Retirement System increased the benefit levels of all employees covered by the pension system. The reforms provide plausibly...

Pensions may be provided for in a modern society by several methods, viz., voluntary individual savings, mandatory fully funded occupational pension systems, and mandatory social security financed by pay-as-you-go. The specific mixture of the three systems we will call the pension composition....

US state pension plans generally use overstated discount rates based on historical performance, creating the appearance of healthy funding at the cost of future underfunding. Conversely, adopting a US Treasury discount rate, or another alternative suggested by previous literature, would cause...

This paper examines the impact of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) in China. Exploiting the staggered implementation of an NRPS policy expansion that began in 2009, we use a difference-in-difference approach to study the effects of the introduction of pension benefits on the health status,...

From 1994–1998 to 2014–2018, the proportion of U.S. workers employed by state and local governments fell from 13.1 percent to 11.8 percent, but the number of state and local government employees rose from 16.8 million to 17.7 million. The number of state and local government employees in...

We examine ill-health retirement of police officers in England and Wales between 2002-3 and 2009-10. Differences in ill-health retirement rates across forces are statistically related to area-specific stresses of policing and force-specific differences in human resources policies. Reforms to...

There is a strong consensus among economists and public pension experts that many public pensions are substantially underfunded and that absent fundamental reform many state and local governments will have to resort to some mixture of tax increases, budget cuts, and/or bailouts. While many...

Pension systems combine government and privately-sponsored support to finance a suitable standard of living during retirement. Pension systems can be financed through pay-as-you-go (PAYG) or through pre-funding. PAYG pension schemes finance old- age retirement benefits in one particular period...