The paper motivates and describes the tax treatment of German retirement benefits and pensions after the 2005 reform initiated by the German Federal Constitutional Court. The main question is whether this reform has produced a "level playing field" among the many instruments generating...

The baby boom generation's entry into old age has led to an unprecedented increase in the elderly population. The social and economic effects of this shift are significant, and in Research Findings in the Economics of Aging, a group of leading researchers takes an eclectic view of the subject....

Many countries have social security systems that are currently financially unsustainable. Economists and policy makers have long studied this problem and identified two key causes. First, as declining birth rates raise the share of older persons in the population, the ratio of retirees to...

The future of Social Security is troubled, both in the United States and in most other developed countries with aging populations. As improvements in health care and changes in life styles enable retirees to live longer than ever before, the stress on national budgets will increase...

Even as life expectancy in many countries has continued to increase, social security and similar government programs can provide strong incentives for workers to leave the labor force when they reach the age of eligibility for benefits. Disability insurance programs can also play a significant...