IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/col/000425/017739.html

Can a Small Social Pension Promote Labor Force Participation? Evidence from the Colombia Mayor Program

Author

Listed:
  • Tobias Pfutze
  • Carlos Rodr�guez-Castel�n

Abstract

One of the primary motivations behind the establishment of noncontributory pension programs is to allow beneficiaries to retire from the labor force. Yet their aggregate effects may be more complex. One such program, Colombia Mayor, stands out for its low eligibility age. Given that beneficiaries are not required to leave the labor force, it practically constitutes a fixed income—an unconditional cash transfer of sorts—to a still economically active population. Using panel data and instrumental variable techniques, this paper shows that the effect of this program has been to raise the labor force participation of relatively younger, particularly male, beneficiaries. This increase occurred precisely in the occupations with characteristics that are likely to require some up-front investment and for the comparatively poorer. We conclude that the transfer effectively loosened the liquidity constraints to remaining in these occupations. No such effect is found for older beneficiaries.

Suggested Citation

  • Tobias Pfutze & Carlos Rodr�guez-Castel�n, 2019. "Can a Small Social Pension Promote Labor Force Participation? Evidence from the Colombia Mayor Program," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Fall 2019), pages 111-154.
    • Handle: RePEc:col:000425:017739
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://economia.lacea.org/contents.htm
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ce Shen & Jessica Johnson & Zhenhe Chi & John B. Williamson, 2020. "Does a universal non‐contributory social pension make sense for rural China?," International Social Security Review, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 73(2), pages 3-26, April.
    2. José Luis Iparraguirre, 2020. "Economics and Ageing," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-030-29019-1, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • J08 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics Policies
    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:col:000425:017739. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LACEA (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/laceaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.