The Political Economy of Social Security

The Political Economy of Social Security
Author: B.A. Gustafsson
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2016-01-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1483290646

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In many western countries with slow economic growth and population growth the increasing cost of the social security system is a concern. The contributions in this volume address this issue from various angles, theoretically as well as empirically and also taking into account institutional conditions. This book discusses current social security policy issues and related research from a number of western countries. Papers include the following subjects: - Recent policy changes in the UK and the Federal Public of Germany - Distributional effects of social security - Public choice models of social security - Economic incentive effects of unemployment insurance and occupational pensions - The macroeconomic effects of the growth of benefits and their financing

Retirement Income

Retirement Income
Author: Mark Warshawsky
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2012
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0262016931

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Strategies, products, and public policies that will help a new generation of retirees maximize income and minimize risk. As members of the baby boom generation head into retirement, they face an economic environment that has changed noticeably since their parents retired. Most of these new retirees will not be equipped, as many in the earlier generation were, with private pension plans, early retirement options, and fully paid retiree health benefits in addition to Social Security and Medicare. Today it is increasingly left to retirees themselves to plan how to maximize retirement income and minimize risk. In Retirement Income, Mark Warshawsky and his colleagues describe strategies, products, and public policies that will help a new generation achieve financial security and income growth in retirement. Warshawsky, a noted expert in the field who has worked in both government and private industry, analyzes two insurance vehicles, life annuities and long-term care insurance, and their capacity to protect against the extra costs arising from longevity and disability. He proposes two innovations. The first is a strategy that includes a set percentage withdrawal from a balanced portfolio, which is gradually used to purchase a ladder of life annuities. The second proposal, which includes a description of the potential choices in product design and available tax characteristics, is a product that integrates the immediate life annuity and long-term care insurance. With Retirement Income, Warshawsky offers practical ideas based on the results of empirical investigations and analyses, which can be applied to household decision making by retirees and their financial planners and to the design of insurance products and public policy.

The Role of Annuity Markets in Financing Retirement

The Role of Annuity Markets in Financing Retirement
Author: Jeffrey R. Brown
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2001-11-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262261692

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Annuity insurance products help protect retirees against outliving their incomes. Dramatic advances in life expectancy mean that today's retirees must plan on living into their eighties, their nineties, and even beyond. Longer life expectancies are the symbol of a prosperous society, but this progress also means that some retirees will need to plan conservatively and cut back substantially on their living standards or risk living so long that they exhaust their resources. This book examines the role that life annuities can play in helping people protect themselves against such outcomes. A life annuity is an insurance product that pays out a periodic amount for as long as the annuitant is alive, in exchange for a premium. The book begins with a history of life annuity markets during the twentieth century in the United States and elsewhere. It then explores recent trends in annuity pricing and money's worth, as well as the economic value generated for purchasers of these products. The book explains the potential importance of inflation-protected annuities and stock-market-linked variable annuities in providing more complete retirement security. The concluding chapters examine life annuities in various institutional settings and the tax treatment of annuity products.

The Economic Theory of Annuities

The Economic Theory of Annuities
Author: Eytan Sheshinski
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2008
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691133050

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Annuities are financial products that guarantee the holder a fixed return so long as the holder remains alive. This book shows how understanding annuities becomes essential as governments that grapple with insolvency of public social security systems place greater emphasis on individual savings accounts.

The Mexican Pension Annuity Market

The Mexican Pension Annuity Market
Author: Gregorio Impavido
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 47
Release: 2007
Genre: Annuities
ISBN:

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This paper analyzes the performance and development of the Mexican pension annuity market established as a consequence of the 1997 pension reform. The Mexican experience displays interesting characteristics providing lessons for other countries that still need to design the decumulation phase of their newly established second pillars. At the same, time it raises some technical and policy concerns that need addressing as they could hamper, in the future, the healthy development of the market. The paper concludes that: 1) general life insurance companies may better hedge longevity risk than specialized annuity companies; 2) competition should be based on prices rather than additional products; 3) better disclosure of options under the 1973 and 1997 social security laws should be given to disability and life annuitants; and 4) various measures should be taken to improve asset liability management including allowing companies to trade over the counter derivatives and substituting over time the regulatory asset liability management framework with an economic asset liability management framework.

Privatizing Social Security

Privatizing Social Security
Author: Martin Feldstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0226241823

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This volume represents the most important work to date on one of the pressing policy issues of the moment: the privatization of social security. Although social security is facing enormous fiscal pressure in the face of an aging population, there has been relatively little published on the fundamentals of essential reform through privatization. Privatizing Social Security fills this void by studying the methods and problems involved in shifting from the current system to one based on mandatory saving in individual accounts. "Timely and important. . . . [Privatizing Social Security] presents a forceful case for a radical shift from the existing unfunded, pay-as-you-go single national program to a mandatory funded program with individual savings accounts. . . . An extensive analysis of how a privatized plan would work in the United States is supplemented with the experiences of five other countries that have privatized plans." —Library Journal "[A] high-powered collection of essays by top experts in the field."—Timothy Taylor, Public Interest

Preserving and Strengthening Social Security

Preserving and Strengthening Social Security
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means
Publisher:
Total Pages: 112
Release: 1999
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

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