Longevity, Life-cycle Behavior and Pension Reform
Abstract
How can public pension systems be reformed to ensure fiscal stability in the face of increasing life expectancy?� To address this pressing open question in public finance, we estimate a life-cycle model in which the optimal employment, retirement and consumption decisions of forward-looking individuals depend, inter alia, on life expectancy and the design of the public pension system.� We calculate that, in the case of Germany, the fiscal consequences of the 6.4 year increase in age 65 life expectancy anticipated to occur over the 40 years that separate the 1942 and 1982 birth cohorts can be offset by either an increase of 4.43 years in the full pensionable age or a cut of 37.7% in the per-year value of public pension benefits.� Of these two distinct policy approaches to coping with the fiscal consequences of improving longevity, increasing the full pensionable age generates the largest responses in labor supply and retirement behavior.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by University of Oxford, Department of Economics in its series Economics Series Working Papers with number 556.Length:
Date of creation: 01 Jul 2011
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:556
Contact details of provider:
Postal: Manor Rd. Building, Oxford, OX1 3UQ
Email:
Web page: http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords: Life expectancy; Public Pension Reform; Retirement; Employment; Life-cycle models; Consumption; Tax and transfer system;Other versions of this item:
- Peter Haan & Victoria Prowse, 2011. "Longevity, Life-Cycle Behavior and Pension Reform," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1140, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
- Haan, Peter & Prowse, Victoria, 2012. "Longevity, life-cycle behavior and pension reform," MPRA Paper 39282, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Peter Haan & Victoria Prowse, 2011. "Longevity, Life-Cycle Behavior and Pension Reform," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 396, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
- Haan, Peter & Prowse, Victoria L., 2011. "Longevity, Life-Cycle Behavior and Pension Reform," IZA Discussion Papers 5858, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
- D91 - Microeconomics - - Intertemporal Choice and Growth - - - Intertemporal Consumer Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving
- J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
- J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
- J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies
- J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-AGE-2011-07-21 (Economics of Ageing)
- NEP-ALL-2011-07-21 (All new papers)
- NEP-DEM-2011-07-21 (Demographic Economics)
- NEP-DGE-2011-07-21 (Dynamic General Equilibrium)
- NEP-LAB-2011-07-21 (Labour Economics)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Mariacristina De Nardi & Eric French & John B. Jones, 2010.
"Why Do the Elderly Save? The Role of Medical Expenses,"
Journal of Political Economy,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(1), pages 39-75, 02.
- Mariacristina De Nardi & Eric French & John Bailey Jones, 2009. "Why do the Elderly Save? The Role of Medical Expenses," NBER Working Papers 15149, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Mariacristina De Nardi & Eric French & John Bailey Jones, 2009. "Why do the elderly save? the role of medical expenses," Working Paper Series WP-09-02, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
- Eric French & John Bailey Jones, 2004.
"The Effects of Health Insurance and Self-Insurance on Retirement Behavior,"
Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College
wp2004-12, Center for Retirement Research, revised Apr 2004.
- Eric French & John Bailey Jones, 2011. "The Effects of Health Insurance and Self‐Insurance on Retirement Behavior," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(3), pages 693-732, 05.
- Eric French & John Bailey Jones, 2001. "The effects of health insurance and self-insurance on retirement behavior," Working Paper Series WP-01-19, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
- Eric French and John Jones, 2001. "The Effects of Health Insurance and Self-Insurance on Retirement Behavior," Computing in Economics and Finance 2001 24, Society for Computational Economics.
- John Bailey Jones & Eric French, 2010. "The Effects of Health Insurance and Self-Insurance on Retirement Behavior," Discussion Papers 10-10, University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics.
- Eric French & John BaileyJones, 2007. "The Effects of Health Insurance and Self-Insurance on Retirement Behavior," Working Papers wp170, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
- Brown, Jeffrey R., 2001.
"Private pensions, mortality risk, and the decision to annuitize,"
Journal of Public Economics,
Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 29-62, October.
- Jeffrey R. Brown, 1999. "Private Pensions, Mortality Risk, and the Decision to Annuitize," NBER Working Papers 7191, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Alberto Alesina & Nichola Fuchs Schuendeln, 2005.
"Good bye Lenin (or not?): The Effect of Communism on People's Preferences,"
NBER Working Papers
11700, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Alberto Alesina & Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln, 2005. "Good bye Lenin (or not?): The effect of Communism on people's preferences," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 2076, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
- Arjan Heyma, 2004. "A structural dynamic analysis of retirement behaviour in the Netherlands," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(6), pages 739-759.
- Borsch-Supan, Axel & Schnabel, Reinhold, 1998. "Social Security and Declining Labor-Force Participation in Germany," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 173-78, May.
Citations
Blog mentions
As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:- Sustainable retirement pension reform?
by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2011-08-15 14:42:00
Cited by:
- Benítez-Silva, Hugo. & García Pérez, Jose Ignacio & Jiménez Martín, Sergi, 2011.
"The Effects of Employment Uncertainty and Wealth Shocks on the Labor Supply and Claiming Behavior of Older American Workers,"
Working Papers
2011-09, FEDEA.
- Hugo Benítez Silva & J. Ignacio García Pérez & Sergi Jiménez Mártin, 2012. "The Effects of Employment Uncertainty and Wealth Shocks on the Labor Supply and Claiming Behavior of Older American Workers," Working Papers 12.11, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
- Hugo Benitez-Silva & J. Ignacio Garcia-Perez & Sergi Jimenez-Martin Author-Email: sergi.jimenez@upf.edu, 2012. "The Effects of Employment Uncertainty and Wealth Shocks on the Labor Supply and Claiming Behavior of Older American Workers," Department of Economics Working Papers 12-12, Stony Brook University, Department of Economics.
- Hugo Benítez-Silva & J. Ignacio García-Pérez & Sergi Jiménez-Martín, 2011. "The effects of employment uncertainty and wealth shocks on the labor supply and claiming behavior of older American workers," Economics Working Papers 1275, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Lists
This item is featured on the following reading lists or Wikipedia pages:Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:556For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Caroline Wise).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

