Taxes,Retirement Transfers,and Annuities*

In most countries, retirement benefits from pension saving must be taken as an annuity. By contrast, Australia allows benefits to be taken as a lump sum, and instead has recently introduced various tax incentives to encourage annuity purchase. This paper investigates the effectiveness of these tax concessions, and concludes that they do little to achieve this objective This is because they are nullified by the provisions of the broader tax and social security framework within which Australian private pension policy is set     

Ageing and unused capacity in Europe: is there an early retirement trap?

We address the issue of how early retirement may interact with limited use of financial markets in producing financial hardship later in life, when some risks (such as long-term care) are not insured. We argue that the presence of financially attractive early retirement schemes in a world of imperfect financial and insurance markets can lead to an 'early retirement trap'. Indeed, Europe witnesses many (early) retired individuals in financial distress. In our analysis we use data on 10 European countries, which differ in their pension and welfare systems, in prevailing retirement age and in households' access to financial markets. We find evidence that an early retirement trap exists, particularly in some Southern and Central European countries: people who retired early in life are more likely to be in financial hardship in the long run. Our analysis implies that governments should stop making early retirement attractive, let retirees go back to work, improve access to financial markets and make sure long-term care problems are adequately insured.
— Viola Angelini, Agar Brugiavini and Guglielmo Weber     

人口预期寿命与退休年龄

人口寿命的不断延长给中国养老事业带来越来越大的压力.文章在两期交叠世代模型的基础上引入退休,在市场完全竞争、充分就业和政府能够控制退休年龄的假设前提下,在个人、企业和政府的行为以及资本市场均衡的层面构建了一般均衡的模型框架,从社会计划者的角度发现福利最大化下的人口预期寿命变化和退休年龄是正相关的,并呈现出负反比例的函数形式.文章还基于参数估计和赋值模拟的方法,求解出了人口预期寿命与退休年龄的调整算法,并以此给出了两者间的调整对照表.根据计算的结果和预期的寿命,建议2030年前逐步将退休年龄延长至65岁.最后通过检验发现,如果不存在人口预期寿命和退休年龄之间的调整机制,在保持养老金收支平衡的前提下,预期寿命的延长将减少养老金的发放,并可能带来社会福利的损失.因此,在中国人口预期寿命不断延长的背景下,建议政府考虑建立人口预期寿命和退休年龄的调整机制.     

Social Desirability of Earnings Tests

Abstract. In many countries, pension systems involve some form of earnings test; i.e. an individual's benefits are reduced if he has labor income. This paper examines whether or not such earnings tests emerge when pension system and income tax are optimally designed. We use a simple model with individuals differing both in productivity and in their health status. The working life of an individual has two 'endings': an official retirement age at which he starts drawing pension benefits (while possibly supplementing them with some labor income) and an effective age of retirement at which professional activity is completely given up. Weekly work time is endogenous, but constant in the period before official retirement and again constant (but possibly at a different level), after official retirement. Earnings tests mean that earnings are subject to a higher tax after official retirement than before. We show under which conditions earnings tests emerge both under a linear and under a non-linear tax scheme. In particular, we show that earnings tests will occur if heterogeneities in health or productivity are more significant after official retirement than before.     

How Much Does Annuity Demand React to a Large Price Change?

In this paper, we present new evidence for the effect of changes in annuity prices on the decision to annuitize. We exploit an unprecedented change in policy in several Swiss occupational pension plans. There is an implied 8 percent reduction in the rate at which retirement capital is translated into an annuity, and this represents a net present value loss of CHF 18,500 (around US$ 20,000). To estimate the impact of this change, we use data from companies that changed their prices and from one large company that did not. We find that the price change reduces the propensity to annuitize among affected individuals by 16.8 percentage points.     

The Design of Pension Pay Out Options When the Health Status during Retirement Is Uncertain

This paper examines the optimal design of pension plans when the health status during retirement is uncertain. Assuming that the health status affects both life expectancy and the marginal utility of consumption, choice between a lump-sum payment and an annuity can be welfare-enhancing if the health status is not observable by pension plan providers. This result holds if the marginal utility of consumption and life expectancy are negatively correlated. On equity grounds, a lump-sum option can be justified even if the marginal utility of consumption is independent of life expectancy.     

Increasing life expectancy and optimal retirement in general equilibrium

We analytically assess the effects of changes in longevity on the interest rate, the consumption-savings behavior, and the optimal retirement decision within a dynamic general equilibrium setting. We derive a simple sufficient condition for which the optimal retirement age always increases with life expectancy. Numerical assessment reveals that for realistic parameter values that reflect the situation in industrialized countries, the optimal retirement age indeed increases with life expectancy and the sufficient condition tends to be fulfilled. Together with the fact that the actual retirement age did not increase in industrialized countries over the last decades, while there have been large improvements in longevity, this leads us to conclude that strong monetary and institutional incentives for early retirement exist and these counteract the effects of increasing life expectancy. Our policy conclusion is that the retirement age should be partially linked to life expectancy and that incentives for early retirement should be removed.     

Perspectives on Australian Retirement Incomes

With important developments over the past two decades in Australian retirement income policy, projected future outcomes—for the public purse, for the national economy and for the future retired—have received considerable attention. This focus on the future should not, however, cause us to lose sight of the present. While the major changes in retirement income policy outcomes will not occur for some decades, the picture for current and recent cohorts of retired people is not static. This article begins with an account of the important policy developments since the 1980s in the Australian retirement income arena—the Australian retirement income system still differs radically from that in most other countries, in relying heavily on a means‐tested income maintenance system, rather than on social insurance. The outcomes for current and recent cohorts of retired people are then examined from two perspectives. The first perspective is an examination of the incomes of the aged in the mid 1990s and of trends over the 1980s and 1990s—including consideration of changes in the level, composition and distribution of aged incomes. The second perspective is an international comparison of the incomes of the aged.     

Why Women Have Lower Retirement Savings: The Australian Case

This study provides empirical evidence of the gender gap in retirement savings trajectories using a large longitudinal Australian database. The persistent trend of retirement income policy over recent decades has been to place responsibility for retirement savings accumulation with the individual employee. These plans are fundamentally linked to employment conditions and individual choices, which shape retirement savings trajectories and outcomes. Australia has a mature compulsory system and thus provides insight for countries embarking on similar paths. This study shows that the gender gap in retirement savings is observable from early on in an individual’s paid working life and persists over time, providing evidence that women are disadvantaged early in their careers, with few signs of improvement. Men, in contrast, are overrepresented in the upper quartile of growth in retirement savings. This study provides important empirical evidence for policymakers concerned with gender differences in retirement outcomes.     

Social security is NOT a substitute for annuity markets

Common wisdom suggests that a fully-funded actuarially fair social security system should increase welfare when households face longevity risk and annuity markets are missing. This wisdom is based on the observation that social security pays benefits as life annuities and therefore appears to complete the market. However, we argue that common wisdom is based on a benefit-only analysis that ignores a fundamental cost—social security crowds out the bequests that households leave (and receive) in general equilibrium. We conduct a general equilibrium cost-benefit analysis of the longevity insurance role of social security, and we show that under certain conditions this decline in bequest income offsets any possible gains from access to a public annuity pool. We abstract from distortions to national income and factor prices to show that the equilibrium bequest channel is all that is needed to reach this conclusion.     

Policy Effects in Hyperbolic vs. Exponential Models of Consumption and Retirement

This paper constructs a structural retirement model with hyperbolic preferences and uses it to estimate the effect of several potential Social Security policy changes. Estimated effects of policies are compared using two models, one with hyperbolic preferences and one with standard exponential preferences. Sophisticated hyperbolic discounters may accumulate substantial amounts of wealth for retirement. We find it is frequently difficult to distinguish empirically between models with the two types of preferences on the basis of asset accumulation paths or consumption paths around the period of retirement. Simulations suggest that, despite the much higher initial time preference rate, individuals with hyperbolic preferences may actually value a real annuity more than individuals with exponential preferences who have accumulated roughly equal amounts of assets. This appears to be especially true for individuals with relatively high time preference rates or who have low assets for whatever reason. This affects the tradeoff between current benefits and future benefits on which many of the retirement incentives of the Social Security system rest.Simulations involving increasing the early entitlement age and increasing the delayed retirement credit do not show a great deal of difference whether exponential or hyperbolic preferences are used, but simulations for eliminating the earnings test show a non-trivially greater effect when exponential preferences are used.     

Retirement Policies and the Life Cycle: Current Trends and Future Prospects

During the 20th century, pensions in developed countries were generally payable from a statutory retirement age which provided a norm for retirement behaviour and a threshold dividing older from younger age groups. Governments, by setting fixed starting dates for work and retirement, created a standardised life cycle with clearly delineated and uniform boundaries between education, work and retirement stages. Over the last 30 years or so, retirement behaviour has diverged from official norms and moved towards earlier retirement, although pressures for later retirement are now increasing as concerns over pension finance provoke calls for older workers to remain economically active. Weaker retirement norms have prompted speculation that working practices may be evolving from a Fordist life cycle with fixed stages to post-Fordist life courses with fluid and variable personal experiences. This paper assesses current trends, asking whether they do indicate major changes in the life cycle, and considers the flexibility of retirement, paying particular attention to the influence of government and employers. Several ways in which retirement could develop are identified, but few of them remove the constraints on retirees: truly flexible retirement will not occur spontaneously and will require explicit policies to safeguard retirement choices.     

The choice between an annuity and a lump sum: Results from Swiss pension funds

This paper uses unique micro data from Swiss employer-based pension plans to study the annuitization decision at retirement. The administrative nature of our data, though limited with respect to individual background characteristics, allows us to analyze real choices over large retirement balances, rather than subjectively reported intentions to annuitize. We find a strong and robust impact of a utility-based measure of the annuity's value (computed within a life-cycle framework) on individual annuitization rates. Low accumulation of retirement assets is strongly associated with the choice of the lump sum, presumably due to the availability of means-tested social assistance. The sponsor's default option, in most cases the annuity, is also found to be highly influential in the decision to annuitize.     

Optimal retirement age,leisure and consumption

In this paper, we study the determination of optimal retirement age, optimal leisure time, and optimal consumption, and we also analyze their relationships using an optimal control theory. We establish a life cycle model and analyze the factors of consumption, leisure, saving, mortality and retirement behaviors simultaneously with an orthogonal-array experimental design. Our results show that the initial salary level and the growth rate of salary are the most important determining factors of the optimal retirement age. The initial consumption level and the interest rate are also important factors affecting optimal retirement age. The mortality improvement has a minor effect on the optimal retirement age. The effects of the Social Security on the optimal retirement age depend on the Social Security tax and the level of Social Security benefit.     

Illiquid life annuities

In this paper, we consider illiquid life annuity contracts and show that they may be preferred to those illustrated by Yaari. In an overlapping generations economy, liquid life annuities are demanded only if the equilibrium is dynamically inefficient. However, an equilibrium displaying a positive demand for illiquid life annuities is indeed efficient. In this latter case, the welfare at steady state is larger if illiquid life annuity contracts are available.     

Pension profile preferences: the influence of trust and expected expenses

This paper studies the influence of people’s expectations about expenses during retirement and trust in pension funds on preferences for different pension arrangements. Although most workers prefer a flat-rate annuity, many workers want to deviate from it. The most popular option is a high/low, annuity-based profile, followed by a partial lump sum payment. Workers who expect declining expenses during retirement are more likely to opt for a high/low annuity-based pension and/or a lump sum payment at retirement. Furthermore, workers and pensioners who do not trust their pension fund are more likely to prefer a lump sum over annuity-based arrangements.     

Social security and economic integration

This letter analyzes the impact of economic integration on capital accumulation and capital flows when countries differ in their social security systems. Funding and early retirement both foster capital accumulation relative to pay-as-you-go pensions with flexible retirement. When economies integrate, both imply capital outflow possibly resulting in utility losses.     

International differences in social security and saving

The U.S. Social Security Administration, in cooperation with similar agencies in other countries, recently developed estimates of social security benefits for twelve major industrial countries. The present paper uses these data to estimate the effects of social security benefits on saving and retirement in an extended life cycle model. The parameter estimates indicate that, with retirement behavior given, social security significantly reduces private saving; an increase of the benefit-to-earnings ratio by 10 percentage points reduces the saving rate by approximately 3 percentage points.     

A theory of reverse retirement

The retirement system is usually regarded as giving a fair reward for a long working career. However, only workers who have a sufficiently long life benefit from that reward, but not workers who die prematurely. To re‐examine the fairness of retirement systems under unequal lifetime, this paper compares standard retirement (i.e., individuals work before being retired) with—hypothetical—reverse retirement (i.e., individuals are retired before working). We show that, under standard assumptions, an economy with reverse retirement, once in place, converges towards a unique stationary equilibrium. At the normative level, we show that, when labor productivity declines with age, reverse retirement cannot be optimal under the utilitarian criterion (unlike standard retirement), whereas reverse retirement can be optimal under the ex post egalitarian criterion (giving priority to the worst‐off in realized terms). Finally, we show that there exists a set of policy instruments that allow a government to organize a successful transition from standard to reverse retirement.     

Postponing retirement: the political effect of aging

Conventional economic wisdom suggests that because of the aging process, social security systems will have to be retrenched. In particular, retirement age will have to be largely increased. Yet, is this policy measure feasible in OECD countries? Since the answer belongs mainly to the realm of politics, I evaluate the political feasibility of postponing retirement under aging in France, Italy, the UK, and the US. Simulations for the year 2050 steady state demographic, economic and political scenario suggest that retirement age will be postponed in all countries, while the social security contribution rate will rise in all countries, but Italy. The political support for increasing the retirement age stems mainly from the negative income effect induced by aging, which reduces the profitability of the existing social security system, and thus the individuals' net social security wealth.