This paper assesses the facts of the matter, searches for their implications for national economies, and considers the scope and need for local and national policies that provide a basis for balanced growth. The first section will summarize the evidence and implications leading to the conclusion...

This paper summarizes the major findings and recommendations in the World Bank's study of old age security systems - Averting the Old Age Crisis : policies to Protect the Old and Promote Growth. The paper describes the most common problems found with dominant systems today; presents the...

The increasing number of disability pensioners may put a strain on the welfare state. In this paper, we try to assess the effect of financial incentives on disability entrance. A sample of Norwegians on long-term sick leave at the beginning of 1989 is examined as of the end of 1989 and the exit...

Migration has important implications for the financial soundness of the pe nsion system, which is an important pillar of the welfare state. While it is common sense to expect that young migrants, even if low-skilled, can help society pay the benefits to the currently elderly, it may nevertheless...

We relate household saving to pension reform, to explain the high household saving rates in urban China from a new perspective. We use the exogenous-policy induced-variation in pension wealth to explicitly estimate the impact of pension wealth on household saving, and obtain a significant offset...

Poland adopted a new pension system in 1999. This new pension system allows Poland to reduce pension expenditure (as a percent of GDP), instead of increasing it – as is projected for the majority of other OECD countries. This paper presents the conceptual background of the new system design....

This paper discusses the relationship between structural change and social policies. It provides a comparative analysis of the basic mechanisms of three major lines of theoretical reasoning that seeks to explain the main reasons by which governments continue to expand their social expenditures...

In a simple stochastic overlapping generation model, individuals work when young and retire when old, generations’ productivity is affected by a serially uncorrelated random shock, and fiat money and nominal public debt are the only storable assets. In this setting, we show that social...

The design of fully funded pension plans is affected by governance and incentive problems, as underlined by the experience of several countries. The analytic perspective of contract theory allows to detect the nature of such problems: pension-fund managers have strong incentives to manipulate...

There has long been a minority view that providing people with cash is an effective way of combating poverty and economic insecurity while promoting livelihoods and work. The mainstream view has been that giving people money, without conditions or obligations, promotes idleness and dependency,...