Fertility has long been declining in industrialised countries and the existence of public pension systems is considered as one of the causes. This paper is the first to provide detailed evidence based on historical data on the mechanism by which a public pension system depresses fertility. Our...

Population aging is typically associated with economic challenges for productivity and financial threats for the old-age financial protection system of a country. This paper takes an optimistic position and outlines key ingredients to make it a successful experience. Yet to turn this challenge...

In this paper I use a multi-period OLG model to study how a demographic shock is distributed among different generations. In particular, I investigate whether a funded pension system allows for a smoother adjustment than an unfunded system. The results suggest that the answer to this question...

The Danish labor market follows the trend in other countries of increasing labor force participation in the 60+ group. In Denmark, this increase has - until now - been most pronounced among 60-64-year-olds and among women. Increasing labor force participation is related to both a decline in the...

In aging societies, information on how to reform pension systems is essential to policy makers. This study scrutinizes effects of early retirement disincentives on retirement behavior, individual welfare, pensions and public budget. We employ administrative pension data and a detailed model of...

This paper investigates the fiscal pressure from demographic change in relation to the labour marketspace for fifty countries that cover 75% of the world population. The pressure-to-space indicator ranks Poland, Turkey and Greece high. Apart from Turkey and India, developing countries rank low...

This paper studies actuarial neutrality in the Austrian pension system. It is often argued that actuarial neutrality constitutes an incentive for people to retire. We show that there are almost no financial incentives within the Austrian pension corridor, when we use the traditional definition...

How can retirement savings be increased? We explore a unique policy change in the context of the German pension system to study this question. As of 2004, the German pension authority started to send out annual letters providing detailed and comprehensible information about the pension system...

We study retirement incentives with augmented option value model à la Stock and Wise (1990). We propose methodological extensions to better reflect the respective incentives faced by singles and couples. Our results show that a more comprehensive modelling of couples' incentives leads to very...

This paper examines the effects of non-contributory pension programs at the federal and state levels on Mexican households' saving patterns using micro data from the Mexican Income and Expenditure Survey. The federal program by itself appears to reduce the saving rate of households whose oldest...