澳大利亚超级年金20年改革及应对危机的经验教训

在介绍澳大利亚退休收入保障制度以及超级年金目标的基础上,文章分析了影响超级年金制度实现目标的资产管理、投资方式和资产配置的情况,比较了1997年、2001年和2008年逐次加深的三次危机对超级年金的不同影响,并对超级年金应对危机的反应能力进行了分析,归纳了三个可能的制度性原因,总结了澳大利亚超级年金应对危机冲击的经验教训。     

Measuring Saving Intentions

Abstract
A need has long been expressed for up-to-date information on householder plans for saving, both quantity and type. This article surveys the international work done on ascertaining householder intentions and then proposes a group of nine specific questions to be put to Australian households with the aim of developing a useful Index of Saving Intentions along with information on household asset allocation. Full development can only be accomplished ex post when results can be correlated over time with various savings measures. It is intended that the Index assist in forecasting household behaviour, the allocation of savings across assets and that it will permit more rapid evaluation of the effects of government policy changes in areas such as taxation and superannuation. Results from initial surveys are presented.     

Gender Differences in Time Use over the Life Course in France,Italy, Sweden,and the US

Abstract

This contribution analyzes how men and women in France, Italy, Sweden, and the United States use their time over the life cycle and the extent to which societal and institutional contexts influence the gender division of labor. In order to test the hypothesis that contextual factors play a crucial role in shaping time allocation, this study considers countries that diverge considerably in terms of welfare state regime, employment and paid working time systems, family policies, and social norms. Using national time-use surveys for the late 1990s and early 2000s and regression techniques, the study not only finds large gender discrepancies in time use in each country at all stages of life but also determines that institutional contexts, in particular the design of family policies and employment regimes, do shape gender roles in different ways, and that Sweden displays the lowest gender gap in time allocation across the life course.     

Gendered Paths to Asset Accumulation? Markets,Savings, and Credit in Developing Countries

An extensive literature shows how property inheritance is biased against women in many developing countries, yet relatively little attention has been given to gender bias in other means of acquiring physical assets, such as the market. Using individual-level data from Ecuador, Ghana, and Karnataka, India, this study analyzes modes of acquisition and financing of housing, agricultural land, other real estate, and businesses. The findings show that women acquire fewer of their assets through the market than men, and that in asset markets, both men and women are more likely to use their own savings than to use credit. The study also analyzes current loans for asset acquisition and finds that, in general, women tend to be somewhat disadvantaged in securing formal bank loans. The results suggest that financial inclusion to promote more gender equal access to accumulation of assets should focus on both savings and credit, with priority to savings.     

Retirement planning in the light of changing demographics

With increasing longevity and decreasing fertility rates, governments and policy makers are increasingly engaged in the question of long term retirement planning. In many cases this has included emphasising the need for individuals to take more responsibility for their own retirement planning through tax incentives, compulsion and changes to the age at which state retirement benefits become available. In the case of Australia, as is considered here, long term retirement planning has been focused around the development of a compulsory defined contribution (DC) superannuation system. Here we investigate the interaction between population ageing and the sustainability of the superannuation system by modelling a general superannuation scheme to compare the adequacy of retirement funds under a number of alternative scenarios. The model incorporates stochastic longevity forecasts and provides insight into the sufficiency of compulsory retirement saving both now and future. We find that the current pension scheme is more robust to longevity improvements for mid-class individuals however significant gaps arise for low-income individuals as longevity improves. Without addressing these issues, government expenditure is expected to increase substantially.     

Employment and the risk of domestic violence: does the breadwinner’s gender matter?

This article studies the effect on the risk of female victimization of the employment status of the woman and her partner. We use individual-level data from the violence against women surveys for Spain, which also provide information on income and a rich set of sociodemographic characteristics. To address the potential endogeneity of the binary employment indicators, we exploit exogenous geographical information on the employment and unemployment rates by gender and age, within a multivariate probit framework. Our estimation results show that male partner employment plays a major role in the risk of physical violence, while female employment only lowers it when her partner is employed too. The lowest risk appears for more egalitarian couples in which both partners are employed.     

Trends in China’s gender employment and pay gap: Estimating gender pay gaps with employment selection

In contrast to the United States and European countries, China has witnessed a widening gender pay gap in the past two decades. Nevertheless, the size of the gender pay gap could still be underestimated as a result of not accounting for the low-wage women who have dropped out of the labor force. As shown by a large and representative set of household survey data in China, since the 1980s the female employment rate has been falling and the gap between male and female employment rates has been increasing. We estimate the gap size using Heckman’s selection-correction model and bounds of the raw gender pay gap, taking into consideration the different male and female employment rates in China. The results support the view that the gender pay gap estimate is biased without taking into account employment selectivity.     

Female employment growth in Britain, 1979–92: some competing hypotheses ∗

Over the period 1979–92, the gender and status composition of employment has undergone significant change in Britain, which cannot be attributed merely to cyclical influences. In this paper changes in the pattern of employment by occupation, gender and part-time and full-time status are decomposed to cast some light on three hypotheses (buffer stock, substitution and segregation) which are designed to explain the growth of female employment in Britain over the period 1979–92. The results reveal that women have made some progress in achieving full-time employment positions, after correction for the influence of structural change and the declining full-time share of employment. It is noted, however, that following the labour market legislation of the 1980s full-time employment is not necessarily more secure than part-time. The long run substitution of part-time for full-time employment has benefited the employment of women, even though their share of part-time employment has declined. The analysis informs the debate on the flexible firm at least in respect of numerical flexibility.     

Changes in Global Trade Patterns and Women's Employment in Manufacturing, 1995–2011

This study investigates the feminization and defeminization trends in manufacturing employment in thirty countries from 1995 to 2011. Utilizing two separate methods, structural decomposition analysis (SDA) and factor content analysis (FCA), the study identifies the major industries and trade partners behind the structural shifts in trade that have induced changes in employment and thus in the rates of women’s employment. The findings highlight that, as a general trend, defeminization in manufacturing has persisted in the Global North, led by a negative trade impact in low-technology industries. In the Global South, feminization and defeminization trends are not as straightforward. Despite positive changes in women’s share of employment in medium-high- and high-technology industries, negative gender bias effects of trade changes are found particularly in high-technology industries, where occupations are notably gendered.     

The Future European Labor Supply: The Critical Role of the Family

The European employment strategy initiated in 1997 is critically dependent upon the further integration of women into the labor market. The European Union has set a specific target employment rate for women of 60 percent by 2010 and is also committed to providing more and better child care facilities. This gender focus is reinforced by the requirement for gender mainstreaming in all aspects of European employment policy. There is an implied Europe-wide, universal policy of encouraging female labor-market participation and reducing the care work performed by domestic labor. However, the European Commission continues to have limited competence in areas of family, social, and welfare policy. As a result, these common employment objectives for women are thus being pursued against a background of quite different systems of social, family, welfare, and indeed labor-market organization. These systems have different economic and employment implications, such that the outcomes of the common European employment strategy will also be highly variable.     

COVID-19 and gender disparities: Labour market outcomes

The study explores the effect of COVID-19 on labour market outcomes for women in the major urban areas in Canada. Using data from the Labour Force Statistics, we find the pandemic has had a disproportionately negative impact on the employment and income of women, worsening gender inequalities. Sectors more likely to employ women faced immense negative pressures, leading to dismal employment numbers. The effects of continued lockdowns and future potential inflation suggest that gender wage disparity continues to increase, worsening the economic health of women and making them even more vulnerable to future event risks.     

Is Racial Exclusion Gendered? The Role of Residential Segregation in the Employment Status of Black Women and Men in the US

This paper explores one angle of the race/gender/class intersection by examining the effect of residential segregation on black women and men's employment status in the US. Do the exclusionary mechanisms embedded in racially-based residential segregation affect black women and men's economic outcomes similarly, or are their employment outcomes differentiated by their different gender statuses? This paper lays out a theoretical framework for understanding the role residential segregation may play in shaping black men and women's labor market outcomes, outlining key mechanisms that link residential segregation to labor market inequality, highlighting the ways in which many of these mechanisms are gendered as well as racialized. This paper also offers an analytic design to test the hypotheses developed in this exploration.     

Asset Bubbles,Unemployment, and a Financial Crisis

A tractable growth model with asset bubbles is presented to demonstrate that a financial crisis caused by a bubble bursting increases unemployment rates. A bubbly asset, which is intrinsically useless, has a positive market value because purchasing the asset is a sole saving method for agents who draw insufficiently low productivity, whereas selling the asset is a fund-raising method for agents who draw high productivity to initiate an investment project. The presence of asset bubbles corrects allocative inefficiency regarding production resources, relocating investment resources from low-productivity agents to high-productivity agents. Accordingly, the presence of asset bubbles can promote capital accumulation. As capital accumulates and output increases, the number of vacant positions increases because firms acquire more funds to cover a search cost. As a result, firms are incentivized to increase employment. However, extrinsic uncertainty may burst asset bubbles and cause a self-fulfilling financial crisis, which is followed by increased unemployment.     

Compulsory Superannuation and Labour Market Responses

Compulsory contributions to superannuation have significant second round effects on labour market outcomes. The effects of employer, employee and government contributions are compared and contrasted for markets with different degrees of wage flexibility. With a flexible wage, the market wage adjusts to offset most of the initial effects of the superannuation levies. However, compulsion means that many employees perceive the present value of the future retirement income to be less than the levy. The levies as a form of tax on labour lead to lower overall remuneration for employees and lower employment     

Contemporary Issues in the Ongoing Reform of the Australian Retirement Income System

The development of a sound and sustainable retirement income system is currently an important social, political and economic issue around the world as many countries face a range of pressures including an ageing population, low national saving levels, maturing Social Security programs and changing employment patterns. As a result of these pressures, the World Bank has advocated a three-pillar system which is broadly reflected in the current Australian arrangements. However, further reform is planned in Australia. The 1995–96 Federal Budget announced a proposal to introduce compulsory minimum employee contributions of 3 per cent of earnings, together with a matching income-tested government contribution. The proposal for government contributions is analysed in this article and an alternative approach is proposed. The important related issues of the taxation of superannuation and the integration between superannuation and the government-funded age pension are also reviewed. As a result, recommendations for change are made to encourage a stable long-term structure that provides retirement incomes in a simple, affordable and fair manner.     

Gender differences in self‐employment

This paper examines the factors that influence transitions into self‐employment, paying particular attention to gender differences. We find that: (i) men are more responsive to the wage differential between wage/salaried employment and self‐employment; (ii) liquidity constraints are more important for men; and (iii) the link between father's self‐employment status and the probability of self‐employment is stronger for men. Taken together, these results suggest that, for women, self‐employment is a closer substitute for part‐time work and labour‐market inactivity than it is for men. We attribute such differences to the different labour market opportunities and occupational strategies of women.     

Race,Affirmative Action,and Women's Employment in US Highway Construction

This paper analyzes employment hours, supplemented by interview data, from large highway construction sites in Boston, Los Angeles, and Oakland in the 1980s and 1990s. This study suggests that affirmative action positively affects the employment of women in construction and where there is more pressure, there are strongr results. Second, white women and women of color tend to work in trades that reflect the existing racial hierarchies among men. Therefore race as well as gender should be reflected in the design and measurement of the impacts of employment programs. Community organizing, advocacy for women and men of color, judicial oversight and positive efforts by unions and employers are still critical to bridging the gap between policy intentions and outcomes.     

Globalisation and Gender Inequality: Evidence from Labour Market in India

This paper examines quantitative and qualitative dimensions of employment issues in India from gender lens. Inequality in quantitative aspects have been analysed gender gap in work participation, composition and structure of employment. The study finds that female work participation in India has declined sharply despite faster economic growth and improvement in female literacy outcomes. The magnitude of decline is sharper in case of illiterate, women from less privileged class and rural backgrounds. Similarly, even after two decades of economic reform, female workers are highly concentrated in low productive, less remunerative and unpaid family labour category of self employment activities. Considering the qualitative dimension of jobs, the paper finds that the condition of female workers are more vulnerable as they are highly concentrated in informal sector and informal jobs with no employment security, no social security, and are being paid relatively lower wages compared to male workers in most of the sub-sector. The paper argues for an urgent policy intervention to ensure access to decent jobs and to provide protection to these vulnerably placed women workers.

     

"MISSING WOMEN": REVISITING THE DEBATE

In a series of papers in the late 1980s, Amartya Sen claimed that about 100 million women were "missing," referring to the number of females who had died as a result of unequal access to resources in parts of the developing world. A subsequent debate has refined these estimates using different demographic techniques. In this paper, we review this debate, provide an update on the number of "missing women," and investigate the determinants of current trends in gender bias in mortality. We find that the number of "missing women" has increased in absolute terms, but fallen as a share of the number of women alive. There have been improvements for women's relative survival in most of South Asia and the Middle East, but deteriorations in China. Improving female education and employment opportunities has helped to reduce gender bias, while the increasing recourse to sex-selective abortions has worsened it.     

Son preference,children’s gender and parents’ time allocation: evidence from China

This article investigates the effect of children’s gender on parents’ time allocation in developing countries due to the long-existing tradition of son preference. A collective model generates predictions concerning the impact of the birth of sons on family behaviour when son preference is treated as a premium in the father’s utility function. Using data from China, I show that, with more sons instead of daughters, the time spent by both men and women on housework rises, while men have to increase their work time in the labour market and women can reduce theirs. The results are consistent with theoretical predictions and are robust for use in further tests. For the possible endogeneity of children’s gender, I use the law forbidding the use of ultrasound-B to reveal the gender of a foetus as instrumental variables as the identification strategy.