A Head-to-Head Comparison of Augmented Wealth in Germany and the United States*

We examine the composition of augmented household wealth (i.e., the sum of net worth and pension wealth) in the United States and Germany. Pension wealth makes up a considerable portion of household wealth, of about 48 percent in the United States and 61 percent in Germany. When pension wealth is included in household wealth, the Gini coefficient falls from 0.889 to 0.700 in the United States, and from 0.755 to 0.508 in Germany. If the wealth shares in Germany were the same as in the United States, this would lead to a 12.6 percent increase in the Gini coefficient in the augmented wealth distribution in Germany.     

Till Death Do Us Part or I Get My Pension? Wives' Pension Holding and Marital Dissolution in the United States

Wives' financial independence gained from their pension may increase the risk of marital dissolution, especially when wives are approaching retirement age (the older wives' independence hypothesis). Applying single and simultaneous equations probit models to data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we investigate the effect of wives' pension holding in 1984 on the risk of subsequent marital dissolution. Results from the single equation model appear to support the older wives' independence hypothesis. However, results from the simultaneous equations model suggest that interpreting the single equation results as a sign of older wives' economic independence may be misleading.
JEL classification : C 33; D 31; J 12; J 32     

退休年龄与社会养老金的定量关系研究

我国现行的社会保障政策与法定退休年龄使得个人养老金收支盈亏及领取水平有很大的差异,并导致高龄退休人员相对贫困化。经计量,现行的社会保障政策才是导致这些不良结果的主要因素。适当降低退休时养老金替代率,提高养老金的年增长率是目前合理的政策调整取向。     

延迟退休年龄与养老保险收支余额:作用机制及政策效应

文章通过连续时间养老金收支模型分析认为延迟退休年龄对养老保险计划收支余额的影响来自四个方面的效应,即缴费年限效应、领取年限效应、替代率效应和差异效应。改革的最终效果是上述四种效应共同作用的结果。短期看,前两种效应占据主导;长期看,后两种效应也具有显著影响。延迟退休年龄的政策效果和工资增长率、养老金增长率、改革速度以及未来参保人口结构有关。理论分析和实证检验结果表明,无论从改革过程还是从对养老保险计划收支余额的影响看,延迟退休年龄都是一个复杂而渐进的过程,延迟退休年龄必将减轻政府在养老保险方面负担的传统说法并不全面。     

The Gender Pension Gap in China

ABSTRACT

China has had a large gender gap in labor force participation, sectors of employment, and earnings. This study shows that disadvantages in the labor market for women are the primary drivers of the gender pension gap. Among people age 60 and older, women receive about half of the amount of men's social pensions. Using the 2013 wave of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and the CHARLS Life History Survey of 2014, this contribution has three main findings. First, about three-quarters of the deficit in women's pensions is explained by women's lower likelihood of receiving occupational pensions, and one-third is due to smaller benefits when they do receive them. Second, the gender deficit in receiving an occupational pension can be explained by education level and employment sector. Third, among pension recipients, nearly one-third of the gender benefit gap is explained by women's fewer years of employment and lower salaries.     

The Inherited Inequality: How Demographic Aging and Pension Reforms can Change the Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth

The role of inherited wealth in modern economies has increasingly come under scrutiny. This study presents one of the first attempts to shed light on how demographic aging could shape this role. It shows that, in the absence of retirement annuities, or for a given level of annuitization, both increasing longevity and decreasing fertility should reduce the inherited share of total wealth in a given economy. Thus, aging is not likely to explain a recent surge in this share in some advanced economies. Shrinking retirement annuities, however, could offset and potentially reverse these effects. The paper also shows that individual bequests will be more unequally distributed if aging is driven by a drop in fertility. In comparison, the effect of increasing longevity on their distribution is non‐monotonic.     

价值、财富与分配"新四说"

目前，学术界在商品价值、社会财富和分配关系的基本理论研究方面仍没有取得共识。为了清晰地使有关价值、财富与分配的各种现象和本质联系都可得到圆满的科学说明，笔者提出“新四说”：各种生产性活劳动创造商品价值——活劳动价值说；全生产要素或经济要素创造社会财富或商品使用价值——全要素财富说；多种产权关系决定按资和按劳等多种分配方式——多产权分配说；按生产要素贡献分配的形式是要素所有者创造价值和财富并据此参与分配，而实质是按生产要素产权分配——按要素贡献的分配形式与实质说(按贡分配形质说)。     

The Impact of Inheritance on the Distribution of Wealth: Evidence from Great Britain

Using the British Household Panel Survey, we investigate the role of inheritance in shaping the distribution of household wealth in Great Britain during 1995–2005a period characterized by a substantial increase in wealth and an equally important decrease in wealth inequality. Abstracting from behavioral effects, we find that inheritances received during this period accounted for 30 percent of the increase in wealth of inheritors. Regression estimates of the effect of inheritance on wealth accumulation suggest that households spend 30 percent of their inheritances on average, and that there is substantial heterogeneity in household responses. Households that accumulated more wealth saved a larger share of their inheritances, as did middle aged households and those with lower initial wealth. Although inheritances are highly unequal they had a small impact on overall wealth inequality. This mainly reflected the fact that their size relative to other sources of wealth was very small.     

The Gender Wealth Gap in Europe: Application of Machine Learning to Predict Individual-level Wealth

This article provides comparative estimates of the gender wealth gaps for 22 European countries, employing data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey. The data on wealth are collected at the household level, while individual-level data are needed for the estimates of gender wealth gaps. We propose a novel approach using machine learning and model averaging methods to predict individual-level wealth data for multi-person households. Our results suggest that random forest performs best as the predicting tool for this exercise, outperforming elastic net and Bayesian model averaging. The estimated gender wealth gaps tend to be in favor of men, especially at the top of the wealth distribution. Men have 24 percent more wealth than women on average. We also find that a high home ownership rate is associated with a smaller country-level gender wealth gap. Our estimates suggest that the individual-level wealth inequality is on average 3 pp higher than the household-level wealth inequality in multi-member households.     

中国企业年金税收优惠政策的比较与选择

2005年,随着首批金融机构获得企业年金经办资格认证,中国企业年金保险进入到具体实施阶段.然而,直到2006年底,关于企业年金的缴费方式、基金的投资管理、给付机制、法规监管以及税收优惠政策等一系列相关问题仍未解决,成为严重制约企业年金市场发展的瓶颈.本文着重从企业年金税收优惠政策的比较与选择入手,结合城镇基本养老保险的情况,通过核算国家税式支出、企业年金积累额等指标,对国家采取适当的企业年金税收优惠政策去引导和促进企业年金市场的发展提出理论依据.     

我国股票市场财富效应的实证分析

通过研究消费与居民收入以及股价变化之间的关系,实证结果表明,我国股票市场不存在财富效应,与国内其他相关研究结论不同。     

我国城镇基本养老保险个人账户定位剖析

我国基本养老保险个人账户资金规模要适度,由劳动与社会保障部统一管理。为提高职工缴费的积极性,关键在于提高个人账户的收益率,实现有效保值增值。我国基本养老保险个人账户的"空账"实质是以不明晰的债权形式存在。当前所讨论的"做实"个人账户,实质是个人账户资产存在形式的转换。对于历史"空账",不应该立即"做实",而应比较机会成本与效益,逐步"做实"。而对于新缴纳的个人账户资金,则应明晰产权,不能随便挪用,但当统筹基金不足时,可以有偿使用。个人账户待遇以自身平衡为原则。     

上市公司股权激励的短期财富效应研究

2006年1月至2008年1月我国共有60多家上市公司采取了股权激励的方案。采用事件研究法对这些上市公司股权激励案例进行实证研究发现,在选定的时间窗口内,总样本的股权激励活动会引起显著的股东短期财富效应变化。分类研究发现,股票期权的激励形式引起的财富效应大于限制性股票的形式,但是,高比例的股权激励并不一定产生较高的财富效应。另外,成长性也是投资者关注的因素之一。成长性高的公司的股价上升幅度较成长性低的公司大。     

养老服务本土化中政府责任的偏差及调整

政府责任的定位是养老服务发展中的核心问题。在我国养老服务发展中的每个阶段,政府的责任和特点有明显的差异性。在借鉴西方福利多元主义经验时,本土化和实践经验不足,养老服务中政府责任过度收缩和责任缺失并存。建立能促型政府是未来政府在养老服务中责任调整的方向,政府的直接服务提供责任应该缩减,而在政策支持、资金投入、服务购买和质量管理方面的责任应该加强。     

基于可持续性的养老保险个人账户目标模式

养老保险个人账户的模式有完全积累制和名义账户制等。文章从社会整体、投资收益率、社会总福利和动态发展等四个角度,分析了各种养老保险模式的优劣,并提出:当前我国可实施名义账户制;在未来,在我国储蓄率和人口结构发生变化后,可适时调整养老保险制度的模式。     

The Effect of Benefit Reductions on the Retirement Age: The Heterogeneous Response of Manual and Non‐Manual Workers

I estimate the effect of benefit reductions on the timing of retirement. The introduction of actuarial adjustments in the German public pension system serves as a source of exogenous variation to estimate discrete time transition rates into retirement for individuals of age 60–66. Responses to benefit reductions are elaborated separately for manual and non‐manual workers. On average, individuals postpone retirement by 13.2 months if pension benefits are reduced by 3.6 percent for each year of early retirement. This result is in line with the previous quasi‐experimental literature and suggests that people respond to the incentive of reducing the implicit tax on further periods of work. However, among men the response is about 50 percent lower for manual workers compared to non‐manual workers. Surprisingly, this does not necessarily indicate that retirement incomes of manual workers deteriorate. The explanation is that disability pensions are available at age 63—without benefit reductions.     

The Structure and Distribution of Household Wealth in Australia

This article uses data from the second wave of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (or HILDA) Survey to provide an overview of the structure and distribution of household wealth in Australia. The data confirm that wealth is very unequally distributed, with the bottom half of the distribution owning less than 10 per cent of total household net worth, while the wealthiest 10 per cent account for 45 per cent. The article also includes an analysis of the factors associated with household wealth that indicates that wealth is significantly related to a range of factors including age, country of birth, parental occupational status, education, marital status, working hours, income, self‐reported savings behaviour, a willingness to take risks and even various lifestyle behaviours, such as smoking and alcohol consumption.     

澳大利亚家庭财富的结构与分配

《经济与社会变化的动态研究——澳大利亚家庭收入与就业动态调查之分析》,是一项大型的研究计划。本文只是该计划之下的一个子课题。这项子课题获得澳大利亚研究理事会的资助,(拨款编号为DPO342970)。我们在文中引用的数据,部分来自家庭与社区服务部辖     

新生代农民工参与养老保险约束条件及路径设计

新生代农民工作为一个庞大的社会群体进入城市,推动着中国工业化、城市化进程加快,他们有着强烈的市民化需求却因养老保险的缺失而严重受阻,不但有损新生代农民工切身利益,也不利于和谐社会构建。基于新生代农民工养老保险构建过程中所面临的各种约束,应以新生代农民工可持续就业为核心、以政府为主导、以土地流转为途径、以自身保障意识为前提的发展模式,确保新生代农民工养老效益得到有效保障。     

The Consumption/Wealth and Book/Market Ratios in a Dynamic Asset Pricing Contex

This paper addresses new insights into the predictability of financial returns. In particular, we analyze two aspects of the controversial forecasting literature. On the one hand, we demonstrate a positive and contemporaneous link between aggregate book/market and consumption/wealth ratios. On the other hand, we show that real estate and human capital, as the present value of all future salaries, are key components of the consumption/wealth ratio in Spain. Specifically, we find that the cointegrating residuals of consumption, asset holdings, real estate holdings, and our measure of human capital provide a better forecast of future returns than does the standard proxy of the consumption/wealth ratio. This result is important because it clarifies the importance of country-specific components of wealth for cases in which the consumption/wealth ratio is employed as an instrument in conditional asset pricing models.Belén Nieto: Financial support from the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología grant SEJ2005-09372 is gratefully acknowledged.Rosa Rodríguez: Financial support from the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología grant SEC2003-06457 is gratefully acknowledged.