Social Security benefits are currently provided as a lifelong benefit stream, though some workers would be willing to trade a portion of their annuity streams in exchange for a lump sum amount. This paper explores whether allowing people to receive a lump sum as a payment for delayed retirement...

Annuities promise to play an increasingly important role in countries with national defined contribution retirement systems. In this article we examine life annuities in two countries, Singapore and Australia, each of which has a national mandatory pension program. Exploiting data on annuity...

In multiple-pillar retirement systems, the government provision of old-age income support plays a very different role from vehicles for encouraging private retirement savings - and for the government regulation and insurance of private savings. Despite the diversity of public and private...

Global aging is prompting workers and taxpayers everywhere to recognize their vulnerability to the inherent uncertainty of unfunded social-security systems. This has generated an international wave of social-security reforms over the last two decades, prompting more than 20 countries to...