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Can We Afford to Grow Older?

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  • Richard Disney

    () (University of Nottingham)

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    Abstract

    The United States Social Security fund is huge and in trouble. The United Kingdom has experimented with the voluntary contracting out of pensions to the private sector. Chile has privatized its public pension system. Australia has adopted a means-tested public pension system. Japan has the earliest retirement age of any advanced economy; it also has the highest rate of labor force participation by elderly men. Can We Afford to Grow Older? provides a comprehensive, up-to-date survey of the implications of population aging in these and other OECD countries relative to a range of specific interrelated issues -- Social Security schemes, employer pensions, educational attainment, wage growth and distribution, economic productivity, consumption, savings, retirement, and health care -- all within a realistic framework for modeling and discussing policy. International in scope, filled with rich institutional detail, and built on a solid technical foundation, this will be a standard reference on the economic consequences of aging. Richard Disney adopts a "life-cycle" view of the world which recognizes that individuals often make plans with a forward-looking perspective across the stages of childhood, the peak of economic productivity, and retirement. He stresses the existence of overlapping generations and the reality of generational transactions (which include tax and transfer systems, bequests, and charity to the elderly). And he assumes intertemporal optimization as a useful unifying basis for analyzing social security, private pension schemes, lifetime labor-supply decisions, consumption, and saving. Among the surprising conclusions that emerge is that there is no "crisis of aging" -- no adverse effect of aging on productivity. And although there are serious crises in pay-as-you-go social insurance programs and in health care, these have little to do with aging. Moreover, the shift in private provision plans away from traditional defined- benefit plans will continue, along with an interest in privatized pensions instead of social security.

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    Bibliographic Info

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    This book is provided by The MIT Press in its series MIT Press Books with number 026204157x and published in 1996.

    Volume: 1
    Edition: 1
    ISBN: 0-262-04157-X
    Handle: RePEc:mtp:titles:026204157x

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    Web page: http://mitpress.mit.edu

    Related research

    Keywords: social security; public pension; private pension; insurance; health care;

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    Citations

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    Cited by:
    1. Disney, Richard & Whitehouse, Edward, 1999. "Pension plans and retirement incentives," MPRA Paper 14755, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Richard Disney & Robert Palacios & Edward Whitehouse, 1999. "Individual choice of pension arrangement as a pension reform strategy," IFS Working Papers W99/18, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    3. Richard Disney & Sarah Tanner, 1999. "What can we learn from retirement expectations data?," IFS Working Papers W99/17, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    4. Richard Disney, 1996. "Ageing and saving," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 17(2), pages 83-101, May.
    5. Frank T. Denton & Byron G. Spencer, 1999. "Economic Costs of Population Aging," Department of Economics Working Papers 1999-02, McMaster University.
    6. Richard Disney & Carl Emmerson & Sarah Smith, 2004. "Pension Reform and Economic Performance in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s," NBER Chapters, in: Seeking a Premier Economy: The Economic Effects of British Economic Reforms, 1980-2000, pages 233-274 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Disney, Richard & Whitehouse, Edward, 2001. "Cross-country comparisons of pensioners’ incomes," MPRA Paper 16345, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Frank T. Denton & Byron G. Spencer, 1999. "Population Aging and Its Economic Costs: A Survey of the Issues and Evidence," Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population Research Reports 340, McMaster University.
    9. Giuseppe Carone & C�cile Denis & Kieran Mc Morrow & Gilles Mourre & Werner R�ger, 2006. "Long-term labour productivity and GDP projections for the EU25 Member States : a production function framework," European Economy - Economic Papers 253, Directorate General Economic and Monetary Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    10. Disney, Richard, 2007. "Population ageing and the size of the welfare state: Is there a puzzle to explain?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 542-553, June.
    11. Börsch-Supan, Axel, 2000. "Rentabilitätsvergleiche im Umlage- und Kapitaldeckungsverfahren : Konzepte, empirische Ergebnisse, sozialpolitische Konsequenzen," Discussion Papers 585, Institut fuer Volkswirtschaftslehre und Statistik, Abteilung fuer Volkswirtschaftslehre.
    12. Disney, Richard & Whitehouse, Edward, 1992. "The personal pensions stampede," MPRA Paper 10476, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Futagami, Koichi & Nakajima, Tetsuya, 2001. "Population Aging and Economic Growth," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 31-44, January.
    14. Disney, Richard & Whitehouse, Edward, 2002. "The economic well-being of older people in international perspective: a critical review," MPRA Paper 10398, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Richard Disney, 2001. "Europe: Is There an Aging Crisis or is it a Public Pension Problem?," CESifo Forum, Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 2(4), pages 25-30, 02.
    16. Mark W. Rosenberg, 2000. "The Effects of Population Ageing on the Canadian Health Care System," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 14, McMaster University.

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