Pension Policy Research Articles

Investigating the intention of purchasing private pension scheme based on an integrated FBM-UTAUT model: The case of China.

The newly established private pension scheme in China has received great attention as it would be an important supplement to China's social safety net and corporate annuity amid an aging population. It provides a way of helping to address the challenge of ensuring adequate retirement income, and the scheme is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. This study investigates factors affecting the intention of purchasing the private pension scheme using a conceptual model based on the integration of Fogg Behavioral Model (FBM) and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model. The questionnaire-based data from a sample of 462 respondents had been analyzed. Both exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to assess validity. The hypothesized relationships in the integrated FBM-UTAUT model were tested using structural equation modeling. The research findings indicate that anticipation, social influence, effort expectancy, performance expectancy, side benefits and facilitating conditions have significant positive impacts on intention to purchase. According to the exploratory factor analysis, the integrated FBM-UTAUT model can explain more than 70% of the total variance. Meanwhile, effort expectancy can be affected by time effort, thought effort and physical effort collectively, while performance expectancy can be affected by risk and trust. It is revealed that the integrated FBM-UTAUT model can be effective in explaining purchase intentions in a private pension scheme context, and this study is expected to offer helpful advice on the design of pension products and the reform of pension policies.

Teacher Pensions: An Overview

This article provides an overview for the special issue and a framework for thinking about the included papers. We begin by explaining why teacher pensions is a topic that should be of interest to the broader education research community and not just specialists in school finance or teacher compensation. Pension costs now account for 11% of K–12 operating expenditures—a share that has been steadily rising. The question for the education research community is whether these expenditures represent the best way to recruit, retain, and motivate high-quality teachers. We briefly review the current pension landscape with an explanation of how these plans work, trends in costs and expenditures, and changes that have been discussed or implemented. We then provide a brief literature review. Finally, we discuss how the articles in this special issue contribute to the literature on such topics as the influence of teacher pension policies on school staffing and workforce quality, teacher preferences for retirement plans, and the sustainability of plans.

Pension level, subjective wellbeing, and preference of care model among elderly people: An empirical study based on structural equation modeling.

The problem of population aging is becoming increasingly serious, and the elderly care model has become the social focus in China. It is urgent to improve the traditional home based elderly care model and increase the recognition of the residents for the socialized elderly care model. Based on the data of the 2018 China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey (CLASS), this paper uses structural equation model (SEM) to empirically test the impact of the elderly group's social pension level and subjective well-being on their choice of various care models. The results show that the improvement of elderly's pension level can significantly inhibit their choice of home-based care model, and promote their choice of community and institution care model. Subjective well-being can play a mediating role in the home-based and community care model choices, but the indirect approach mediated by subjective well-being only plays a supplementary role. In addition, the heterogeneity analysis shows that there are discrepancies in the impact and path for the elderly with different gender, age, household registration, marital status, health status, education level, number of children, and gender of children. The results of this study will help the improvement and development of social pension policy, optimizing the structure of residents' elderly care model and the process of "active aging".

What does it Take for a Successful Pension Scheme?

Labor market reform encompasses a wide range of issues aimed at increasing competitiveness, increasing productivity, and improving labor force lives. No issue, however, has been more critical than ensuring that the pension system delivers on its promises. This has been a major issue for the labor force, and it will continue to be so. Countries all over the world have made efforts to improve their pension systems. Some have privatized it in order to make it more efficient and less taxing on the government. The main objective of pension and retirement policies is to provide adequate income in old ages. Countries consider many elements to choose their pension system according to five pillar pension schemes. This paper tries to look at these different retirement plans around the world and to give an assessment of their characteristics. Using a simple model, it attempts to display the relationship between the type of pension system and its success. The findings of some simple pension reforms can be lightening the way for policymakers.

Raising sons or daughters for old age? Influence of children's gender on intergenerational family support in rural families.

Under the background of miniaturization of family size and a growing number of young and middle-aged population outflow in rural China, the study of family pension mechanism in rural China from the perspective of changes in the pension functions of son and daughter will not only help to deepen the understanding of the change rules of China's family system, but also provide important reference for the future design of rural pension system. The data come from the China Family Tracking Survey (CFPS), a nationwide social survey project runs by the Social Science Research Centre of Peking University. After excluding missing data, we obtained a valid sample of 11,207 sons and 2028 daughters in four data periods. We applied a fixed effects model for the analysis. In rural areas, sons mainly provide economic support, while daughters mainly provide life care, thus forming a gender-based division of labor. With increasing off-farm job opportunities for daughters, they provide more economic support for their parents, but the time they spend on housework for their parents is reduced. As the number of children in a family has increased, daughters' role in supporting their parents has decreased. This research shows that although the traditional son-centered pension mode in China has not completely disintegrated, it has changed significantly. The findings reveal that changes in family size and improvements in women's status are important factors in changing family support patterns. Different from the thought research about intergenerational relationship for a whole model, this article from the family internal different subjects role identity, shows the characteristics of the individual in the family, is conducive to theoretically explore the tension in the intergenerational relationship, individual and family which is helpful to understand the contemporary China's rural family generation ethics and intergenerational solidarity model. Families are classified more carefully according to the number, size and gender of children in the family, so as to fully show the heterogeneity and complexity of intergenerational relationships and old-age care models in rural families with different structural types. The discussion of the above issues has refined the description of rural family pension resources in China, which has certain reference significance for improving rural pension policies and actively dealing with the aging population.

Care and pension policies for cognitively impaired elderly in China: Current situation and challenges

Care and pension policies for cognitively impaired elderly in China: Current situation and challenges

РАСЧЕТ СТРАХОВЫХ ПЕНСИЙ В РЕСПУБЛИКЕ ЮЖНАЯ ОСЕТИЯ

This scientific article is designed for social guarantees of citizens of the Republic of South Ossetia in terms of pension insurance, which is based on the study of the pension legislation of the Republic of South Ossetia and is due to the fact that pension policy issues, one way or another, concern each of us, that is, those who have already been assigned a pension, and those who will have the right to receive it in the future. The pension serves as a necessary guaranteed income to ensure the vital activity of citizens of the Republic of South Ossetia and the proposed formulas will create conditions for establishing differentiation in calculating the amount of pensions, which should be overestimated from the amount of wages and, accordingly, from the amount of insurance premiums deducted to the Social Fund of the Republic of South Ossetia.

Pension System for the Rural Areas in Actual Social and Economic Conditions in China

The article first describes and analyzes China's social support measures for rural population from 1950s to nowadays. It depicts the indistinct stages of pension system institutionalization from the time it appeared and up to the present. The major Chinese society peculiarity lies in a huge gap between standards of living in the city and in the country. It has its present characteristics due to the historical environment of official employment in Chinese villages and the previous absence of social and pension governmental support as its circumstances. In the study latent periods of switching from one pension form to the others are revealed. The fact is that China's social support measures for rural population has only history of one hundred years. However different pension forms replace each other dramatically during this time while special aspects of moral issues, family relations and social structures of Chinese society complicate the situation. Various aspects of rural pension policy in China are underexplored for that moment. The paper fills this important gap and gives much attention to its social, cultural and economical aspects. Evolution of Chinese rural pension policy starts from the "Five Guarantees" system, continues with the "Baoji model" and concludes with the "New Pension System" development. This system is to equalize rural and urban pension rights in China. In conclusion due to the National Social Policy only from 2014 every Chinese rural citizen aged 60 and older has pension entitlements. This fact can indicate that the primary maturity of China’s state pension system for old-age rural population has been reached.

Health among workers retiring after the state pension age: a longitudinal and comparative study

BackgroundIn recent decades, many countries have observed increasing labor force participation beyond the state pension age (SPA). However, there is a lack of research on employment beyond SPA and how it relates to older workers’ health. Moreover, there is a need to better understand how institutional factors affect the relationship between older workers’ employment and health. In this study, we examine simultaneous employment and health trajectories over 11 years in 12 countries from Europe and the Americas, and study how these trajectories differ by welfare state regime and level of old-age pension redistribution.MethodsWe used a harmonized pooled-country dataset of 3699 older workers based on four representative panel surveys: the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS), and the Chilean Social Protection Survey (EPS). We conducted multichannel sequence analysis to estimate the types of simultaneous employment–health trajectories, and multinomial regression analysis to examine the relationship between trajectory types and institutional factors.ResultsWe found that late retirement was equally associated with poor and good health. There is also a higher prevalence of late retirement trajectories in combination with poor health in liberal welfare regimes and in countries with lower levels of old-age pension redistribution.ConclusionOur study indicates that nonliberal welfare regimes and redistributive old-age pension policies may be better suited to protect vulnerable workers while providing those in good health with the opportunity to work beyond the SPA.

Impact of main residential locations on depressive symptoms among older adults in China: A Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis.

With the development of urbanization in China, the scale of internal migration and the number of immigrants among older adults are increasing. This requires paying attention to the living conditions and environment of immigrants. Many studies note a gap in the prevalence of depressive symptoms among older adults living in different main residential locations. However, few studies have examined the extent to which main residential locations influence depressive symptoms among older adults. This study aims to quantify the effect of main residential locations on depressive symptoms. For this study, we used data from the 2018 Chinese Longitudinal Health and Longevity Survey and randomly selected 8,210 individuals aged 65 years and older were from the community to determine the effect of main residential locations on depressive symptoms among older adults. We further used the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method to quantify the explanatory factors of depressive symptom gaps among older adults and to estimate the relative effect of individual characteristics on depressive symptoms. In this study, we noted significant differences in depressive symptoms among older adults in different main residential locations. Rural-urban migrants had higher depressive symptom scores (7.164). According to the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis, the high proportion of the depressive symptom gap can be explained by years of education, income, and exercise among different main residential locations groups. In addition, in the main parts of the explained differences, the proportions of the limitation of activities of daily living (2.28, 0.46, and -52.11%) showed opposite effects, while their share in different main residential locations groups varied widely. Urbanization has resulted in more rural people moving to urban areas in China; Rural-urban migrants have the highest prevalence of depressive symptoms, which needs attention. Thus, there is an urgent need to integrate the health insurance and pension policy for urban and rural residents. This study provides a basis for formulating health policies and promoting the mental health of older adults in China as well as in low- and middle-income countries.

Exploring the contributions of concepts of time to pension studies in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom

PurposeThis article aims to link discussions of the role of earnings-related pension measures with time in Hong Kong (HK) and the United Kingdom (UK). It presents a new conceptual “time-based framework” to explore two related types of government response to the way people accumulate pension incomes through participation in paid work. The first is to consider governments' perceptions of appropriate time in work and retirement. The second is to consider how governments use pension measures to influence the connection between the amount of time people spend in paid work and retirement.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper. The time-based framework is developed using literature concerning discretionary time and the social construction of time. To explore the empirical significance of this framework, the authors discuss how it can be applied to the analysis of earnings-related pension measures in HK and the UK.FindingsThe evidence generated from the discussion of the earnings-related pension measures in HK and the UK shows that pension policies can serve both as a financial and time instrument. At the same time as influencing the connection between the amount of time people spend in paid work and the pensions they can accumulate, pension policies can be used to convey the government's views on important time issues, namely the appropriate length of time in work and retirement, and the relative value of the time spent in paid work and providing informal care.Originality/valueA new framework is developed to explore the connection between the studies of earnings-related pension measures and time, which is an understudied area.

Health improvements of older adults based on benefit duration: Lessons from Korean social pension policies

The social pension, introduced in 2008 in Korea, has now become the most prominent old age income for most older adults. As of May 2022, it paid a monthly benefit of around USD 275 for 6.0 million older persons aged 65 and over who belong to the bottom 70% of the income and asset distribution. Although social pension's objectives focus on alleviating old age poverty and increasing income levels, it also encompasses a clear implication on health: social pension benefit can be spent on items or activities that improve the beneficiary's health.Using the Korean Longitudinal Study on Ageing data, between 2006 and 2018, and the Propensity Score Matching combined with Generalized Difference-In-Differences based on event study design, this study investigates the effects of receiving the social pension on objective measures of health that are representative of health and well-being in old age, by benefit duration. Study results showed that continually receiving social pension significantly improved beneficiaries’ grip strength and cognitive ability. Grip strength was improved by 2.3-kg in the fifth year of receiving social pension. Additionally, the cognitive ability (K-MMSE score) was improved by 1.309 points in the first year. Results of descriptive analysis suggested that the social pension may have benefitted the health of the beneficiaries by improving their nutrition, health care utilization, and physical activities, and reducing financial strain and associated stress level.To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the cumulative effects of nation-wide social pension programs on older adults’ objective health measures by benefit duration up to five years, in a high-income country setting where old age income security systems are under-developed.

Public-Employee Pensions and Retirements

Around the time of their adoption, reformers argued pensions would help encourage public employees to retire rather than remain in their jobs indefinitely. However, the significance of specific pension policies for retirements within numerous plans is not well-known. Using new data on service retirements from 81 state-employee defined-benefit plans between 2001 and 2019, I examine pensions’ relationship with retirements, while also accounting for other variables that might matter. The results indicate that early retirement incentives, relaxed post-retirement work restrictions, and higher employee pension contributions are all associated with more retirements, while increased employer contributions and cost-of-living adjustments are associated with fewer. As governments continue to consider fiscal reforms to retirement plans, they also should keep their personnel needs and pensions’ relationships with them in mind.

Effect and mechanism of reading habits on physical and mental health among the elderly: Evidence from China.

Responding to an aging society worldwide and ensuring the physical and mental health of the elderly are important problems that need to be addressed. Thus, this study aimed to improve the quality of providing the spiritual and cultural needs of the elderly and study the internal transmission of reading habits and its effect on the physical and mental health of the elderly. Using the data from China's comprehensive social survey in 2018, this study applied the Probit model and ordinary least squares method to comprehensively estimate the influence of reading habits of the elderly on their physical and mental health. Stepwise regression and bootstrap method were combined to explore the influencing mechanism, and an instrumental variable method was used to solve endogeneity problems. Results indicate that the reading habits of the elderly have a significantly positive effect on their own physical and mental health. Social activity is the positive conduction path, whereas social justice perception and learning willingness are the negative conduction path. Among low-income families, agricultural workers, and the elderly whose household registration is in rural areas, the benefits of reading to the body and mind are more significant. After dealing with endogeneity problems and a series of robustness tests, the conclusion of this paper still holds. Finally, reference policy suggestions are proposed for the follow-up active aging policy, such as promoting reading for all, organizing various social activities, formulating active pension policies for the elderly, and allocating more public resources for vulnerable elderly groups.

The politics of pension policy responses to COVID-19: comparative insights from Chile, Bolivia and Peru

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a debate around the world on whether pension systems should be used to support individuals in economic distress. In Latin America, Chile, Bolivia and Peru have passed legislation allowing withdrawals from pension pots, yet with some significant variation. We argue that these measures cannot be simply understood because of the COVID-19 emergency alone but should also take into consideration the combination of legacies from previous pension re-reforms and the political institutional setting. We find that where previous re-reforms have been difficult to implement or have not been implemented at all and the institutional setting makes change difficult, measures that lead to a significant amount of savings being withdrawn may be favoured by political actors as a way to break the stalemate. By contrast, where re-reforms have been largely implemented and the political institutional setting poses few barriers to change, withdrawals may be more limited.

Evaluation on service quality in institutional pensions based on a novel hierarchical DEMATEL method for PLTSs

In recent years, to address the continued aging of China’s population, the Chinese government has focused on the issue of pensions through a series of pension policies. The traditional system of institutional pensions is facing serious challenges, with a variety of novel pension modes placing them under enormous pressure. Furthermore, the development of institutional pensions has been restricted by many factors, such as long construction cycles and high fees, meaning that this traditional system no longer meets the pension needs of the elderly. Improving the service quality of institutional pensions is inevitable for future progress. Thus, identifying the key factors that influence the service quality of institutional pensions, and understanding the relationships between these factors, is hugely significant. Furthermore, traditional decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method can not solve this problem because the number of factors is too large. To address these issues, we establish an evaluation system for Chinese pension institutions, and propose a hierarchical DEMATEL model based on probabilistic linguistic term sets (PLTSs), which can help decision makers to find the key factors influencing service quality in institutional pensions and deal with the evaluation problem with a large number of criteria. The proposed hierarchical DEMATEL model based on PLTSs fully reflects experts’ preferences and evaluation information, and is able to identify the directions in which China’s pension institutions should improve their quality of service. In addition, we use the best-worst method (BWM) to calculate the importance values of each subsystem, which makes the cause-effect relationship between subsystems more reasonable than the traditional DEMATEL method. Finally, we apply our method to evaluate nursing homes in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province and propose some managerial implications.

Investigating the impact on mental wellbeing of an increase in pensions: A longitudinal analysis by area-level deprivation in England, 1998–2002

In 1997 approximately two million people aged 60 years or over were living poverty in the UK. In 1999 the UK Government raised real pension incomes of low-income pensioners by around a third through the introduction of the Minimum Income Guarantee (MIG). This study explores the implications of this change for pensioners’ mental wellbeing with a focus on differences by area level deprivation in England. We explore mental wellbeing outcomes of 205 men (750 person-year observations) and 367 women (1,336 person-year observations) of state pension age from scores on the General Health Questionnaire from the British Household Panel Survey using a panel difference-in-difference estimation procedure. We compare the mental wellbeing of pensioners receiving MIG to that of low-income pensioners not claiming MIG, from 1998 to 2002. To investigate differences by area deprivation we use quintiles of the of the distributions of the 2000 and 2019 local-authority-level English Index of Multiple Deprivation. Models controlled for age, marital status and year. Between 1998 and 2002, 136 (38%) of low-income women and 57 (28%) of low-income men in the sample were claiming MIG at any one time. Income increased by 31% for men and 22% for women. There was no change in mental wellbeing for women but we found an improvement for men overall and for men living in the most deprived areas, in the latter case with a decrease of the GHQ-12 score of 2.43 points (95% CI: −5.49, 0.02). This estimate was similar across all measures of deprivation, and across both years of IMD. This study provides tentative evidence that the increase in pension income in England for low-income pensioners contributed to a reduction of inequalities in mental wellbeing for men. This needs to be considered in terms of future state pension policies.

The impact of automatic enrolment on the mental health gap in pension participation: Evidence from the UK

A large body of evidence shows that individuals with poor mental health have lower income over the lifespan but a dearth of evidence exists on how poor mental health affects savings behaviour. In this paper, we provide novel evidence of a mental health gap in pension participation in the UK using nationally representative longitudinal data from Understanding Society (UKHLS). Beginning in 2012, the UK government introduced automatic enrolment enabling us to assess the impact of one of the largest pension policy reforms in the world on this mental health gap. We measure mental health using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) which is a commonly used tool for measuring psychological distress. Prior to automatic enrolment, we find that male private sector employees with poor mental health are 3.7 percentage points less likely to participate in a workplace pension scheme while female private sector employees with poor mental health are 2.9 percentage points less likely to participate after controlling for key observables including age, education, race, marital status, number of children, occupation type, industry type, presence of a physical health condition and cognitive ability. The implementation of automatic enrolment removes the mental health gap in pension participation, equalising the pension participation rates of individuals with and without poor mental health in the private sector.

Should we revive PAYG? On the optimal pension system in view of current economic trends

Over the last decades, we have generally seen a gradual shift from pay-as-you-go (PAYG) to funding to finance pensions. In this paper, we develop an analytical framework that includes three models of pension design, allowing us to study the role of efficiency, redistribution, and time-consistency in pension policies. We use these models to analyse the impact of several trends (a permanent decline in the rate of return on financial markets, a decline in the average rate of economic growth, decreased output volatility and increased capital market volatility) on the optimal balance between PAYG and funding. Although the models lead to similar qualitative results, general conclusions cannot easily be drawn as the various trends work in opposite directions. A numerical simulation experiment with a calibrated version of the time-consistent model shows that it may be wise to halt the shift towards more funding. There is insufficient evidence however to call for a real revival of PAYG.

URGENCY OF PENSION REFORM IN GEORGIA

The article discusses the urgency of pension reform in Georgia. The disadvantage of the existing pension model was its pressure on the state budget. At the same time, the recent demographical changes in Georgia revealed new challenges and put at risk the sustainability of the future state pension system; The previous pension system in Georgia would not have provided the old aged citizens with so called “Decent pension” that’s why there was an emergency of a new reformation. It is worth mentioning, that global aging is the history of world success. Nowadays people live longer. This is the triumph of social health security, shown up by establishing healthy life style, pharmaceutical market, generally citizens’ social-economic conditions and economic promotion as well. Aging process affects economic increase, formal and non-formal supporting system and mobilization of supporting resources for elderly citizens from the Government’s side. Nations should admit the global context of the problem, realize new demographic reality; However making some corrections in pension policy might be painful for elderly groups. Key words: Relevance of reformation, demographic changes, active aging, budget pressure, usefulness of the reform , rate replacement, accumulating pension system, pension indexation.