WHAT EXPLAINS THE DIFFERENCE IN THE EFFECT OF RETIREMENT ON HEALTH? EVIDENCE FROM GLOBAL AGING DATA

This paper analyzes the reasons for differences in the estimated effect of retirement on health in previous studies. We investigate these differences by focusing on the analysis methods used by these studies. Using various health indexes, numerous researchers have examined the effects of retirement on health. However, there are no unified views on the impact of retirement on various health indexes. Consequently, we show that the choice of analysis method is one of the key factors in explaining why the estimated results of the effect of retirement on health differ. Moreover, we re‐estimate the effect of retirement on health by using a fixed analysis method controlling for individual heterogeneity and endogeneity of the retirement behavior. We analyze the effect of retirement on health parameters, such as cognitive function, self‐report of health, activities of daily living (ADL), depression, and body mass index in eight countries. We find that the effects of retirement on self‐report of health, depression, and ADL are positive in many of these countries.     

Barriers to Elderly Consumers’ Use of Support Services: Community Support in Japan’s Super-Aged Society

ABSTRACT

Rural areas need support services to help elderly people sustain their ordinary lives, especially in light of today’s aging societies. In Japan, nonprofit organizations and residents’ associations, which are based in local relationships, provide support services aimed at helping the elderly with their daily buying behavior. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of the barriers preventing the use of such support services. We collect 133 respondents from semi-structured interviews through door-to-door visits using snowball sampling to show that there are three such barriers: lifestyle, capability, and trust. Furthermore, we discussed measures to reduce these barriers using our results of correlation analysis and analysis of variance. Our findings have implications for a new direction in social marketing for elderly people. As societies continue to age and highly accessible services become ever more necessary, the insights of our study will be applicable not only in Japan but across the world.     

Heterogeneity in the Relationship between Happiness and Age: Evidence from the German Socio‐Economic Panel

This paper studies the evolution of life satisfaction over the life course in Germany. It clarifies the causal interpretation of the econometric model by discussing the choice of control variables and the underidentification between age, cohort and time effects. The empirical part analyzes the distribution of life satisfaction over the life course at the aggregated, subgroup and individual level. To the findings: On average, life satisfaction is mildly decreasing up to age 55 followed by a hump shape with a maximum at 70. The analysis at the lower levels suggests that people differ in their life satisfaction trends, whereas the hump shape after age 55 is robust. No important differences between men and women are found. In contrast, education groups differ in their trends: highly educated people become happier over the life cycle, where life satisfaction decreases for less‐educated people.     

青海省海东地区小额农户贷款发展现状

小额农户贷款在完善农村金融市场、推动农村经济增长、维护农村地区稳定方面发挥着重要作用。在目前农村金融服务体系不完备、农村资金大量外流的情况下,开展小额贷款是丰富农村金融体系多层次格局、满足农村金融需求的必然选择。     

完善我国农村社会养老保险体系的思考

随着人口老龄化浪潮的汹涌而至,传统的家庭养老和土地保障功能在不断弱化,农民养老问题变得日益突出和紧迫,因此;探索适合我国国情的农村社会养老保险体系,对维护社会稳定,促进农村经济乃至整个国民经济的发展具有重要的现实意义,也是维护社会公平、构建社会主义和谐社会的必然要求.     

Aging and Savings in Korea: A Time-Series Approach

Thanks to numerous empirical research studies, a general consensus has been reached on the effects of an aging population on the economy, particularly in terms of economic growth and savings. However, most of the previous research examines the effects of the aging on economically advanced countries. Furthermore, rarely have those studies used the time-series properties of the data. By applying two popular time-series statistical tools (multivariate cointegration analysis and vector error correction model) to Korean data, this paper finds: (1) There is a long-run equilibrium linkage among the aging, medical expenditure and savings; however (2) there is no Granger-causality present between aging and national savings in the short run in Korea.     

重庆市人口老龄化对卫生服务的影响及对策研究

本文以重庆市人口老龄化的现状、特点、发展趋势为背景,分析人口老龄化对卫生服务的影响,总结目前重庆市老年医疗、护理服务中存在的问题,提出适合重庆市老年人的卫生服务政策,以期为有关部门决策提供参考依据。     

日本消费税问题的由来及其改革展望

消费税从提出到实施及其之后的改革一直是日本政治经济中的一个敏感性话题,反映了日本政治、经济及社会背景的深刻变化,直接原因是高居不下的财政赤字及不断攀升的债务负担,根本原因在于长期经济衰退使得政府财源枯竭,同时严重的老龄化又使得社会保障支出面临巨大压力,选举制度下的政党政治斗争也放大了消费税效应,从目前情况看,提高消费税税率似乎是一个必然选择.     

Non-exponential bounds for stop-loss premiums and ruin probabilities

We present an inventory of non-exponential bounds for ruin probabilities and stop-loss premiums in the general Sparre-Andersen model (renewal model) of risk theory. Various additional bounds are given if one assumes that the ladder height distribution F associated with the risk process belongs to a certain class of distributions, in particular if it is concave or it exhibits a (positive or negative) aging property. In most cases, these bounds are shown to improve existing ones in the literature and/or possess the correct asymptotic behaviour when the distribution F is subexponential. Since in the classical (compound Poisson) risk model the ladder height distribution is always concave, all the bounds given in the paper are also valid for this model. Finally, in many cases the results of the paper are also valid for any compound geometric distribution.     

Preserving knowledge legacies: workforce aging,turnover and human resource issues in the US electric power industry

The aging of the workforce is believed to be a potential threat to productivity of companies both in the US and worldwide. High levels of turnover that may result from workforce aging could cause short-term as well as permanent loss of knowledge critical to firm operations and customer service. While there is a wealth of research regarding the causes of turnover, there is comparatively little research on the actual effects of turnover, particularly involuntary forms of turnover such as retirement. Focusing on the US electric power industry, whose employees have average ages and company tenures among the highest in the world, this paper explores the aging workforce issue both qualitatively and quantitatively. Results from an executive survey encompassing companies representing over 75 per cent of the industry's workers affirm that workforce aging is the electricity industry's dominant human resource (HR) concern but that it is interrelated with many other top HR issues, including skill shortages, leadership, and transition from an ‘entitlement-based’ to a ‘performance-based’ culture. Implications of prior literature on organizational learning, turnover and socio-technical systems theories are discussed, and propositions are offered as a framework for further research on the general effects of potential knowledge loss due to aging-related turnover.