IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lis/liswps/777.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Poverty in Old Age

Author

Listed:
  • Bernhard Ebbinghaus
  • Kenneth Nelson
  • Rense Nieuwenhuis

Abstract

While the financial sustainability of pension systems has been high on reform agendas, the adequacy of retirement incomes has only recently come into focus. This chapter analyses old-age poverty from a comparative and longitudinal perspective using repeated waves of cross-sectional micro-level income data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). We focus on high-income OECD countries that experienced demographic ageing and substantial pension reforms since the mid-1980s, and analyse old age poverty in terms of relative income positions and purchasing capacity. Overall, there has been a secular trend towards a decline in old age poverty, which has converged towards the poverty rates observed in the working age population. However, since ongoing pension reforms in several countries have reduced public benefits, fostered prefunded savings, augmented the retirement age, and strengthened the link between contribution histories and old-age incomes, we identify population subgroups that have difficulties in gaining sufficient pension credits or savings into individual pension plans during their working lives to escape poverty in old age, including women, migrants, and those with lower education. We also present examples of poverty trends across synthetic cohorts in old age. Overall, we observe that more recent cohorts are better protected against poverty in old age compared to cohorts that were born longer ago.

Suggested Citation

  • Bernhard Ebbinghaus & Kenneth Nelson & Rense Nieuwenhuis, 2019. "Poverty in Old Age," LIS Working papers 777, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
  • Handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:777
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/777.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grech, Aaron George, 2010. "Assessing the sustainability of pension reforms in Europe," MPRA Paper 27407, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Arne L. Kalleberg, 2018. "Job Insecurity and Well-being in Rich Democracies," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 49(3), pages 241-258.
    3. Ebbinghaus, Bernhard (ed.), 2011. "The Varieties of Pension Governance: Pension Privatization in Europe," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199586028, Decembrie.
    4. Tony Atkinson & Bea Cantillon & Eric Marlier & Brian Nolan, 2002. "Indicators for Social Inclusion," Politica economica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 1, pages 7-28.
    5. Russell, Helen & Maître, Bertrand & Nolan, Brian, 2010. "Monitoring Poverty Trends in Ireland 2004-2007: Key Issues for Children, People of Working Age and Older People," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number RS17.
    6. Paul Bridgen & Traute Meyer, 2007. "Private Pensions versus Social Inclusion? Citizens at Risk and the New Pensions Orthodoxy," Chapters, in: Traute Meyer & Paul Bridgen & Barbara Riedmüller (ed.), Private Pensions versus Social Inclusion?, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Deaton, Angus, 1985. "Panel data from time series of cross-sections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 109-126.
    8. Atkinson, Tony & Cantillon, Bea & Marlier, Eric & Nolan, Brian, 2002. "Social Indicators: The EU and Social Inclusion," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199253494, Decembrie.
    9. Grech, Aaron George, 2014. "Evaluating the possible impact of pension reforms on elderly poverty in Europe," MPRA Paper 57639, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Kenneth Nelson & Johan Fritzell, 2024. "Old Age Incomes, Wealth, and Poverty across the Globe," LIS Working papers 891, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Patricia Justino & Bruno Martorano, 2016. "Redistribution, inequality and political participation: Evidence from Mexico during the 2008 financial crisis," WIDER Working Paper Series 140, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Kenneth Nelson & Rense Nieuwenhuis & Susanne Alm, 2019. "Sweden," World Bank Publications - Reports 31626, The World Bank Group.
    3. Patricia Justino & Bruno Martorano, 2016. "Redistribution, inequality and political participation: Evidence from Mexico during the 2008 financial crisis," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-140, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Duclos, Jean-Yves & Araar, Abdelkrim & Giles, John, 2010. "Chronic and transient poverty: Measurement and estimation, with evidence from China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 266-277, March.
    5. Manos Matsaganis & Chrysa Leventi, 2011. "The distributional impact of the crisis in Greece," DEOS Working Papers 1124, Athens University of Economics and Business.
    6. Menon Martina & Perali Federico & Veronesi Marcella, 2017. "“Leaving No Child Behind:” Preferences for Social Inclusion and Altruism," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 17(3), pages 1-19, July.
    7. Sabina Alkire & Maria Emma Santos, 2010. "Acute Multidimensional Poverty: A New Index for Developing Countries," Human Development Research Papers (2009 to present) HDRP-2010-11, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
    8. Alkire, Sabina & Santos, Maria Emma, 2014. "Measuring Acute Poverty in the Developing World: Robustness and Scope of the Multidimensional Poverty Index," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 251-274.
    9. Vani K. Borooah & Paddy Hillyard & Mike Tomlinson, 2006. "Equity‐Sensitive Indicators Of Living Standards With An Application To Northern Ireland," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 53(5), pages 616-635, November.
    10. Said Outlioua & Abdesselam Fazouane, 2023. "Which factors affect the sustainability of pension schemes?," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(1), pages 89-108, February.
    11. Wei Su & Gianni Betti & Baris Ucar, 2020. "Longitudinal measures of fuzzy poverty: a focus on Czechia, Hungary and Poland after the crisis," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 54(1), pages 27-41, February.
    12. Vincent Hildebrand & Philippe Kerm, 2009. "Income inequality and self-rated health status: Evidence from the european community household panel," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 46(4), pages 805-825, November.
    13. Espinoza-Delgado, José & López-Laborda, Julio, 2017. "Nicaragua: evolución de la pobreza multidimensional, 2001-2009," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), April.
    14. Bea Cantillon, 2010. "Disambiguating Lisbon. Growth, Employment and Social Inclusion in the Investment State," Working Papers 1007, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    15. Brandolini, Andrea & Micklewright, John, 2020. "Tony Atkinson's New Book, Measuring Poverty around the World: Some Further Reflections," IZA Discussion Papers 12890, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Sabina Alkire & Suman Seth, 2013. "Selecting a Targeting Method to Identify BPL Households in India," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 112(2), pages 417-446, June.
    17. H. Xavier Jara & Erik Schokkaert, 2017. "Putting measures of individual well-being to use for ex-ante policy evaluation," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(4), pages 421-440, December.
    18. Tim Goedemé & Karel Van den Bosch & Lina Salanauskaite & Gerlinde Verbist, 2013. "Testing the Statistical Significance of Microsimulation Results: Often Easier than You Think. A Technical Note," ImPRovE Working Papers 13/10, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    19. Pierre Pestieau, 2009. "Assessing The Performance Of The Public Sector," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 80(1), pages 133-161, March.
    20. Miki Malul & Daniel Shapira & Amir Shoham, 2013. "Practical modified Gini index," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(4), pages 324-327, March.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:lis:liswps:777. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 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: Piotr Paradowski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lisprlu.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.