The taxation of life annuities under adverse selection

This paper studies how annuities should be taxed in a Mirrlees-type model in the presence of adverse selection and a positive link between income and longevity. The government is able to address the adverse selection problem by implementing a progressive marginal tax rate on annuities. This amounts to subsidizing small annuities (purchased by low incomes) and taxing large annuities (purchased by high incomes). Numerical simulations suggest that the taxation is significant and becomes more pronounced as annuitants get older.     

Consumption over the life cycle: The role of annuities

We explore the quantitative implications of uncertainty about the length of life and a lack of annuity markets for life cycle consumption in a general equilibrium overlapping generations model in which markets are otherwise complete. Empirical studies find that consumption displays a hump shape over the life cycle. Our model exhibits life cycle consumption that is consistent with this pattern. Our calibrated model, which includes an unfunded social security system, displays a hump shape but the peak occurs later in the life cycle than in the data. Adding a bequest motive causes this decline to begin at a younger age.     

Efficiency in overlapping generations economies with longevity choices and fair annuities

When individuals can influence their life-expectancies and save in annuities, suboptimal savings result from the lack of incentives to choose the optimal longevity, even when annuity returns can be made contingent to longevity-related choices. Specifically, the golden rule steady state maximizing the representative agent utility cannot be attained as a competitive equilibrium under laissez-faire, even with actuarially fair annuities contingent to longevity-enhancing choices. In order to decentralize through markets the golden rule, longevity-enhancing expenditures need to be taxed if the steady state old-age consumption exceeds the annuitized capital return, and subsidized otherwise—the government budget being balanced through lump-sum transfers or taxes. Interestingly, with positive population growth the expected net contribution is negative when longevity-enhancing expenditures are taxed, and positive when subsidized.     

生命的洞穴

我历来对洞穴没有兴趣。我的几次洞穴经历，都是在偶然的情况下发生的。世界这么大，阳光如此明媚，不管你站在任何一个地方、哪怕是一个平平常常不起眼的荒野土坡，都是一种幸福。在洞穴之中，却是另一种景象，有如在岁月之后、视野之外，身不由己地心存畏惧。人类的祖先都是居住在山上，确切地说，是生活在山上的某处洞穴中。可以说，洞穴是人类的母腹。人类回过头去审视孕育自身的衣胞之地，那并不是现在为旅游业开放的各种各样的洞穴。现在，五颜六色的灯光，扶手的铁链，盘旋上下的阶梯，人为地打扮了漫长而艰难的人类生息的产道。远古…     

Estimating worldwide life satisfaction

Whilst studies of life satisfaction are becoming more common-place, their global coverage is far from complete. This paper develops a new database of life satisfaction scores for 178 countries, bringing together subjective well-being data from four surveys and using stepwise regression to estimate scores for nations where no subjective data are available. In doing so, we explore various factors that predict between-nation variation in subjective life satisfaction, building on Vemuri and Costanza's (Vemuri, A.W., & Costanza, R., 2006. The role of human, social, built, and natural capital in explaining life satisfaction at the country level: toward a National Well-Being Index (NWI). Ecological Economics, 58:119-133.) four capitals model. The main regression model explains 76% of variation in existing subjective scores; importantly, this includes poorer nations that had proven problematic in Vemuri and Costanza's (Vemuri, A.W., & Costanza, R., 2006. The role of human, social, built, and natural capital in explaining life satisfaction at the country level: toward a National Well-Being Index (NWI). Ecological Economics, 58:119-133.) study. Natural, human and socio-political capitals are all found to be strong predictors of life satisfaction. Built capital, operationalised as GDP, did not enter our regression model, being overshadowed by the human capital and socio-political capital factors that it inter-correlates with. The final database presents a stop-gap resource that, until robust surveys are carried out worldwide, allows comparisons of subjective life satisfaction between nations to be made with reasonable confidence.     

Longevity and life expectancy

The increase in life expectancy at all ages during the last two centuries is in need of a quantitative model capable of resuming the whole process under a single concept and simple mathematics. The basic hypothesis was that through improved hygiene, medicine, and life-style, the stumbling blocks to the full expression of longevity were progressively removed. The mathematics of learning processes was then applied to the secular evolution of life expectancy at various ages. The hypothesis proved very fertile. Logistic equations fit long strings of statistical data, covering the evolution of life expectancy at various ages, for both sexes, and in many European nations for almost two centuries. These life expectancy increases seem to move progressively to a common asymptote of about 79 years for men and about 84 years for women. It is suggested that these values are taken as a definition of longevity, presumably explicitating a coding in DNA. The evolution of life expectancy during the last couple of centuries appears to follow consistent paths precisely mapped with simple mathematics. This opens the way to more integrated and holistic theories.     

The associations between early life circumstances and later life health and employment in Europe

We use data from the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe to estimate for thirteen European countries the associations of early life circumstances—measured by childhood health and socioeconomic status (SES)—with educational attainment, and later life health and employment (at ages 50–64). In all countries and for men and women, favorable early life circumstances, and in particular a higher childhood SES, are associated with a higher level of education. In most countries and in particular for women, favorable early life circumstances are associated with better later life health, also when education is controlled for. The significant associations of favorable early life circumstances with a higher incidence of later life employment are mostly transmitted through education and later life health.     

绿色社区成就绿色生活

绿色社区是指具备了一定的符合环保要求的硬件设施、建立了较完善的环境管理体系和公众参与机制的社区。其创建的根本目的是建设一个以人为本、健康优美的人居环境，建立一个公众积极参与的环保监督机制，提高社区的活力、凝聚力和向心力，培养一种大家关心社区、社区爱护大家的新风尚。     

生命的激情

在西双版纳工作17年，绿叶比红花给我留下更为深刻的印象。因为这里到处是一片浓绿的椰林、芭蕉林、芒果林、橡胶林……每个村寨都淹没在一片树海之中。不论从地上看，从天上看，绿色都是这里的基调。在这里，罕见其他颜色。罕见，不等于没有。只是它常常被绿色包围了、溶化了。在这里，想一枝独秀的花朵总是开得怯生生的。她没有必要开得那么娇艳。因为再平凡不过的花朵，总有那么多热带的昆虫给她传媒、授粉，她照样得以繁衍，一代代把生命延续下去。于是，热带花朵中罕有一枝独秀的。它们常常靠一种群体气势在绿海中展现，似乎不这样不足…     

Modeling life expectancy in Turkey

This study is concerned with understanding the factors of life expectancy in Turkey for the period 1965-2005. The determinants of life expectancy in Turkey are related to selected social, economical and environmental factors. Bounds testing approach to cointegration is employed to compute the long-run elasticities of longevity with respect to the selected economic, social and environmental factors. There exists no previous study that estimates empirically the determinants of life expectancy in Turkey on the basis of time series data and cointegration framework. Empirical results suggest that nutrition and food availability along with health expenditures are the main positive factors for improving longevity whereas smoking seems to be the main cause for mortality. The results also draw a number of policy recommendations for improving longevity.     

Defining quality of nursing work life

As the largest single employee component of hospitals, nurses are critical to the functioning of the organization, and improving employee productivity continues to be a common theme in the health care literature. However, any increased productivity will be transitory if achieved at the expense of the quality of nurses' work life (QNWL), since improvement in the QNWL is prerequisite to improved productivity. The conceptual components of the concept of QNWL that differentiate QNWL from the concept job satisfaction are explored.     

Racial disparities in life insurance coverage

We evaluate the extent to which there are racial disparities in life insurance coverage using multiple years of the Survey of Income and Program Participation between 2001 and 2010. We find that African Americans hold significantly more life insurance – especially whole life insurance – after controlling for other factors. We demonstrate that our findings diverge from prior work because we examine all households instead of focusing exclusively on married and cohabitating households. Although earning shocks due to mortality likely contribute to racial disparities in wealth, the influence is mitigated by the racial composition of life insurance holdings.     

周国城:人生书画,书画人生

周国城，1950年出生于浙江杭州，喜画梅兰竹菊和水墨荷花。书法、绘画、篆刻作品多次入选全国、省、市展览与专集，并多次获奖，现为中国书法家协会会员，西冷印社社员，广州市美术家协会副主席，广州市书法家协会副主席，广州市文史研究馆馆员，广州书画研究院院长，国家一级美术师。     

Optimal fertility along the life cycle

We explore the optimal fertility timing in a four-period OLG economy with physical capital, whose specificity is to include not one, but two reproduction periods. It is shown that, for a given total fertility rate, the economy exhibits quite different dynamics, depending on the timing of births. If all births take place in the late reproduction period, there exists no stable stationary equilibrium and the economy exhibits cyclical dynamics due to labor growth fluctuations. We characterize the long-run social optimum and show that optimal consumptions and capital depend on the optimal cohort growth factor, so that there is no one-to-one substitutability between early and late fertility. We also extend Samuelson’s Serendipity Theorem to our economy and study the robustness of our results to: (1) endogenizing fertility timing, (2) assuming rational anticipations about factor prices, (3) adding a third reproduction period.