Governments should urgently reform their pension systems to ensure that the growing share of workers in temporary or part-time employment can contribute enough during their working lives to receive an adequate income in retirement, according to a new OECD report. Pensions at a Glance 2019 says that non-standard employment, such as self-employment, temporary or part-time … Continue reading
The shift from pensions to account-type savings plans has been a disaster for lower-income, black, Hispanic, non-college-educated, and single workers, who together add up to a majority of the American population. But even among upper-income white college-educated married couples, many do not have adequate retirement savings or benefits. Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the … Continue reading
It won’t be launched for another year, but details of the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP) were unveiled Tuesday, and it includes benefits indexed to inflation. Last April, Ontario passed legislation to create a provincial pension for the more than 3.5 million people who do not have a workplace pension. The ORPP will be phased … Continue reading
A large literature in behavioural economics finds that households benefit from assistance with the challenging task of preparing financially for retirement. Workplace pension program characteristics such as default options or savings rate escalators tend to significantly increase contributions to these plans (Madrian and Shea 2001; Choi et al. 2004; Thaler and Benartzi 2004). Recent evidence … Continue reading
Canadian pension plans saw their funding decline in 2015 and are facing a rocky outlook for 2016 that could make it difficult to recoup their losses. A review of 449 Canadian pension funds by consulting firm Aon Hewitt shows the average pension plan’s solvency position fell to 87.6 per cent as of Dec. 16, a … Continue reading
In recent years, there has been a strong push to expand the Canada Pension Plan (CPP). Ontario has already set out a plan to create an additional mandatory provincial program mirroring the CPP called the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP), which is slated for implementation on January 1, 2017. Yet the debate about expanding compulsory … Continue reading
Workplace pension reforms The Pensions Act 2008 put in place a framework for workplace pension reform designed to increase private pension saving in the UK. This framework was amended slightly by the Pensions Acts 2011 and 2014. One of the key reforms was that, from October 2012, all eligible employees are to be automatically enrolled … Continue reading
When I was a kid old people weren’t very well off. The words poor and pensioner often went together. I remember a poster (presumably by one of the age charities) which I used to pass on the way to my swimming lesson. It said something like, “Poverty and loneliness, the punishment for old age.” That would have … Continue reading
Workplace pension scheme membership has increased to 59% in 2014, from 50% in 2013, driven by increases in membership of occupational defined contribution and group personal and group stakeholder schemes.The increase is likely to be driven by automatic enrolment. Occupational defined benefit pensions schemes represented less than half (49%) of total workplace pension membership in … Continue reading
Registered pension plans (RPPs) are a key component of workers’ compensation packages and one of the pillars that Canadians use to build retirement income. As the social and economic landscape evolved over the last three decades, the extent to which Canadians held jobs providing RPP coverage changed substantially. Among employed workers at least 15 years … Continue reading
More than two thirds of employers have now automatically enrolled workers into a pension scheme, with many contributing substantially more than is legally required, CIPD figures have revealed The average employer contribution is 5.6 per cent of salary, with employees typically contributing 4.7 per cent, the CIPD’s latest Labour Market Outlook report found. The legal … Continue reading
Key points For those below retirement age, 45% of men and 49% of women in Great Britain did not have any private pension savings in 2010-2012. 95% of men and women working in Accommodation and food service industries did not pay into a private pension in the UK in 2012. In ‘Public administration, defence and … Continue reading
A new economic impact study finds that pension benefit expenditures provide important economic support to the economy, including more than $943 billion in total economic output and 6.2 million jobs in the United States. Pensionomics 2014: Measuring the Economic Impact of Defined Benefit Pension Expenditures reports the national economic impacts of public and private pension … Continue reading
America has a retirement crisis, but it’s not what some people want you to believe it is. It’s not the defined benefit pension plans that public employees pay into over a lifetime of work, which provide retirees an average of $23,400 annually (although some public officials fail to make their required contributions to these and … Continue reading
In 2010, only 19 percent of individuals ages 50-58 whose household incomes were less than 300 percent of the poverty line participated in a pension of any kind at their current jobs, compared to 56 percent of those above 300 percent of poverty. This paper investigates this pension gap. In particular, we decompose the pension … Continue reading