The demand for institutional long-term care is likely to remain high in OECD countries, because of longer life expectancy and falling cohabitation rates of the elderly with family members. As shortages of qualified nurses put a cap on the supply of beds at nursing homes, excess demand builds....

When the future evolution of demographic processes is described in a stochastic setting, the challenge is to communicate the meaning of forecast uncertainty in an understandable way, to decision makers and public at large. For the purpose of risk communication, a formal setting is developed, in...

Empirical literature has found evidence in favour of household bargaining models.In contrast to earlier tests that are limited to assignable private goods, we use childpreference data in order to extend the empirical evidence on household bargaining topublic household goods. In the empirical...

Options for reforming unfunded public pension schemes that are now being discussed all share the feature that the burden induced by demographic change would be shifted towards presently living and away from unborn generations. Existing models of the political economy of pension reform can not...

As one possible solution to the well-known financing crisis of unfunded social security systems, an increase in the retirement age is a popular option. To induce workers to retire later, it has been proposed to strengthen the link between retirement age and benefit level. The present paper is...

A pay-as-you-go pension scheme is associated with positive externalities of having children and providing them with human capital. In a framework with heterogeneity in productivity, and stochastic and endogenous investment in fertility and education, we discuss internalization policies...

Many countries face the problem of how to reform social security systems to cope with increasing life expectancy. This raises questions concerning both distribution and risk sharing across generations. These issues are addressed within an OLG model with stochastic life expectancy across...