By Rok Spruk, on November 1st, 2010
The central aim of my bachelor’s thesis is to demonstrate the unsustainability of public pension system in OECD countries in the longer run through the lens of a rigorous theoretical and empirical analysis.
The origins of contemporary public pension schemes date back to 19th century when Bismarck Germany in 1881 first adopted a universal old-age public pension system based on pay-as-you-go (PAYG) funding principle. The principle itself captures full advantages of high (stationary) population growth rate. In the simplest form, PAYG pension scheme is based on the notion of generational solidarity upon which current generations pay mandatory social security contribution into the public scheme. Aggregate contributions are then paid out to current retirees. The cycle is then expanded through generations. However, PAYG funding scheme is sustainable as long as the population growth is high and above the marginal productivity of the capital. Back in 19th century, public pension schemes were adopted under unrealistic assumptions about future population prospects. In 19th century, advanced countries experienced high population growth rate, high fertility rate and an extremely low share of dependent old population that was receiving universal old-age support from PAYG pension schemes. These set of assumptions was crucial to the stability of government-provided old-age support embodied in the public pension schemes.
The sustainability of PAYG pension system requires the equivalence of population growth rate and real interest rate. In the early 20th century, the advanced world shifted towards aging population, declining fertility rates and lower labor market entry rate. In broad terms, a growing old-age dependency ratio led to the pure disequilbrium effects. In a theoretical framework, I re-examined the neoclassical framework of lifecycle hypotheses embodied in Samuelson and Cass-Yaari models of life-cycle utility maximization. The lifecycle hypothesis is based upon the assumption of the three-period model where individuals maximize the consumption in the course of a lifetime. In the first period, individuals do not discount the future consumption since, in this period, individuals acquire the human capital. In the second period individuals enter the working age and discount the future consumption. Hence, in the third period, individuals retire consume the output produced in the working-age period. Since future discounting is compounded, the lifetime consumption increases geometrically. In purely analytical terms, the individuals maximize the utility of consumption through time preference rate.
Considering the abovementioned equivalence between population growth rate and real interest rate, the stability of the equilibria requires the period discount rate to equal the population growth rate. If population growth rate decreases, the stability of the equilibria requires that individuals decrease the future discount rate by the same rate to keep the PAYG pension system within the theoretical limit. The rigorous theoretical formulation of the neoclassical model of lifetime consumption, which essentially captures the necessary conditions for equilibrium stability of public pension schemes, had been put forth by Paul A. Samuelson in his seminal contribution to the theoretical foundations of stationary “PAYG” public pension scheme .
In the course of the last decades, OECD countries have experienced a significant drop in fertility rates, population growth and, under the political climate of social democracy, a widespread adoption of early retirement schemes and generous social security benefits. In addition, labor market exit age dropped significantly, initiating a trend towards the unprecendent growth of generational indebtedness.
The OECD estimated that between 2000 and 2050, old-age dependency ratio is forecast to increase to the largest extent in Japan (193 percent), Spain (136 percent), Portugal and Greece (135 percent). The astonishing increase in the estimated old-age dependency ratio directly reflects the declining fertility rate in OECD countries from 1960s onwards. I estimated the ratio of fertility rate between 1960-1970 and 2000-2006 for OECD countries at around 2, which means that average fertility rate between 1960-1970 was twice the fertility rate between 2000-2006. The highest fertility ratios were found in Spain (2.23), Italy (1.96), Ireland (2.00) while the lowest ratios were found in Denmark (1.37), Netherlands (1.72) and the United States (1.46).
High and stable effective retirement age is the main assumption underlying the stationary stability of PAYG pension system. In the 20th and 21st century, OECD countries have experienced an unprecendent decline in effective retirement age. Blöndal and Scarpetta (2002) estimated the decline in labor market exit age for OECD countries between 1960 and 1995. The female labor market exit age had declined significantly in Ireland (10.7 years), Spain (9.1 years) and Norway (8.8 years). Male labor market exit age exerted persistent decline in all developed OECD countries except for Iceland. The exit age declined significantly in the Netherlands (7.3 years) and Spain (6.5 years).
In a large part, declining labor market exit age has confluenced the rapid growth of unemployment and disability benefits and early retirement incentives from the second half of the 20th century onwards. As the OECD correctly contemplated, in a number of countries, disability pensions and unemployment benefits can be used as de facto early retirement schemes. In a large part, widespread growth of early retirement schemes and implicit incentives for moral hazard in retiring too early via unemployment and disability schemes is held responsible by generous welfare states in the aftermath of the World War II.
When I examined various features affecting early retirement choices, I came across an interesting finding. I regressed labor market exit age and marginal tax rate in a cross section of 23 OECD countries in 2007. I estimated the relationship between exit age and marginal tax rate using a classical OLS linear regression model. The estimate suggests that, holding all other factors constant, if marginal tax rate increases by 1 percentage point, average labor market exit age decreases by 1.88 months. Surprisingly, 51.74 percent of sample variation is explained by marginal tax rate alone. The sample constant is statistically significant, suggesting that if the hypothetical marginal tax rate were zero, the average labor market exit age in randomly chosen country from OECD sample would be 69.65 years. The sample constant is consistent with a prior theoretical expectations since it concurs with the “substitution effect” hypothesis that higher marginal tax rate leads to lower labor supply and fewer working hours.
The cost of early retirement in OECD countries
Source: T.T. Herbertsson & J.M. Orszag, The Cost of Early Retirement in OECD, 2001. OECD, Pensions at Glance, 2009.
Fiscal imbalances arising from unsustainable PAYG public pension systems in OECD countries cannot be assessed without a sufficient estimate of economic costs of unfunded pension liabilities. I approximated the cost of early retirement using Auerbach-Kotlikoff-Gokhale (1999) methodology that directly estimates the size of generational imbalances created by public social security systems. Large and rapidly unsustainable net pension liabilities occured in late 1980s. Van den Noord and Herd (1993) estimated the size of net pension liabilities in seven major OECD countries. The results suggest that continental European countries have had the largest net pension liabilities in terms of GDP. The size of pension liabilities in France and Italy had been about 2.5 times the size of their respective GDPs and twice the stock of the public debt.
Gokhale (2008) directly estimated fiscal imbalances arising from unfunded pension liabilities to current and prospective generations. The size of generational fiscal imbalance, as a share of the GDP, is extremely large and rapidly unsustainable in all OECD countries. In fact, the size of the imbalance is the most severe in Greece (875 percent of the GDP), France, Finland and the Netherlands (500 percent of the GDP) while it is more than twice the size of the GDP in all OECD countries except for the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Fiscal imbalance in OECD countries
Source: J. Gokhale, Measuring Unfunded Obligations of European Countries, 2009.
I built the econometric model of public pension expenditure for a cross section of 23 OECD countries in 2007 to assess which variables might explained the cross-country variation in public pension expenditures. I’ve been aware of the possible drawbacks of choosing a cross-section model since it might be vulnerable to specification errors and the unbiasedness of regression coefficients. To account for possible specification bias, I conducted Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Shapiro-Wilk and Jarque-Bera normality tests. By performing normality tests, I have examined whether the normality assumption of normally distributed error terms is valid in the studied sample of 23 OECD countries considering error terms as identically and independently distributed.
In the set of explanatory variables that might yield consistent and robust estimates of regression coefficients I chose 10 various demographic, economic and institutional independent variables. Apart from demographic and economic variables, institutional variables are dichotomous since the institutional features can be captured by binary modes of choice. The dependent variable is the size of public pension expenditures in the share of the GDP.
The results suggest that public pension expenditures are positively correlated with the share of population aged 65 and older (0.746**), difference in life expectancy after age 65 between 1960 and 2005 (0.477*) and dichotomous variable for continental European countries (0.697**) where * and ** indicate the statistical significant of the sample correlation coefficient at the 5% and 1% level. The estimates suggests that the probability of higher pension expenditures in the share of the GDP is likely to occur in a continental European country known for a relatively large share of older population and a high difference in life expectancy after age 65 between 1960 and the present. On the other hand, public pension expenditures are negatively correlated with average effective retirement age (-0.475**), private pension funds as a share of GDP (-0.658**), labor market exit age (-0.523**), dichotmous variable for Anglo-Saxon countries (-0.544**) and a dichotomous variable for private pension system (-0.672**), where ** denotes the statistical significant of the sample correlation coefficient at the 1% level. Again, the estimates suggest that the probability of lower pension expenditure is likely to occur if a randomly chosen country from the OECD sample is Anglo-Saxon and has a high effective retirement age, large private pension funds as a share of the GDP, high labor market exit age and a mandatory private pension system. The coefficients suggest that in repeated sampling, the estimated sample correlation coefficient will include the true or correct population value in 99 percent of cases.
I conducted the econometric model which consisted of 8 regression specifications. I chose double-logarithmic model which yields direct elasticities as regression coefficients. However, I added two exceptions. In regression specifications 5 and 6, I chose a mixed specification mostly due to the inclusion of private pension funds (assets) variable in the regression specification. Unfortunately, but the share of private pension funds in Greece in 2007 equals 0 percent of the GDP which does not enable the researcher to apply double-logarithmic model as the basis of regression specification.
The estimates suggest that the share of population aged 65 and older is statistically singificantly positively related to the share of public pension expenditures in the GDP. Hence, the elasticity of public pension expenditures with respect to effective retirement age ranges from -1.465 to -4.935, suggesting that an increase in effective retirement age by an additional year leads to per unit increase in public pension expenditures by more than a unit increase in the share of the GDP. The coefficient of private pension funds is highly statistically significant. The elasticity of public pension expenditures with respect to private pension funds (as a share of the GDP) ranges from -0.34 to -0.38 and is statistically significant at the 1% level. The elasticity suggests that a 10 percentage point increase in the share of private pension funds reduces the share of public pension expenditures in the GDP, on impact, by 3.4-3.8 percent, holding all other factors constant. In addition, the estimates of coefficients for dichotomous variables suggest the following: the probability of higher public pension expenditures (as a share of GDP) is likely to occur in continental European countries with mandatory private pension system. Five estimates of dichotomous coefficients are statistically significant at the less than 10% level.
The significance of dichotomous (dummy) coefficients has been tested by beta coefficient analysis to rank the magnitudes of separate effects of explanatory variables on public pension expenditures as dependent variable. The results suggest that continental European countries are significantly more likely to face higher public pension spending in the share of GDP compared to Anglo-Saxon countries.
Earlier I mentioned the necessity of normality assumption in yielding robust, consistent and unbiased estimates of regression coefficients. The assumption has been questioned by conducting Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (K-S), Jarque-Bera test (J-B) and Shapiro-Wilk (S-W) normality test. The aim of the testing the normality assumption is to observe whether error terms distribute normally so that estimated test statistics, standard errors and confidence intervals are reliable. In setting test statistic, I set the normality assumption as null hypothesis. The results from K-S, J-B and S-W tests show that the null hypothesis cannot be rejected at 5% level, suggesting that the normality assumption is valid in the studied sample. Hence, test statistics, standard errors and confidence intervals are both valid and reliable.
The meaningful question to evaluate the prospects of the coming public pension crisis is how to reverse the growth of fiscal imbalances and reform public pension system as to avoid erratic generational indebtedness. Aging population and the growth of old-age dependency ratio trigger an enormous future burden on public finances in OECD countries. Lower fertility rate and population growth shall place an incurable burden on the stability of PAYG public pension systems. The estimates suggest that life-expectancy after the age of 65 is likely to increase by 2050 and gradually approach the age of 90 for both male and female. Assuming the effective retirement age is 65, the remaining life expectancy is 25 years or almost one-third of the average lifetime. As Alemayehu and Warner (2004) suggest: “Old-age health care costs thus will impose increasingly severe pressure on private finances and government coffers. Indeed, applying our age-specific estimates to the age distribution anticipated for the year 2030, we find that if nothing is done to alter current patterns of health care, per capita health care expenditures will rise by one-fifth due to population aging alone.”
The long-term pension reform that aging societies of the West should undertake is a complementary measures of three key policy features of the reform.
First, the transition to fully-funded retirement savings accounts is the only viable and sound pension reform that can alleviate the damage generated by the growing fiscal imbalances. The theoretical foundation of the transition from public pension systems to fully-funded pension system has been laid down by Feldstein and Liebman (2001). The authors derived an algebraic solution which suggests that keeping a PAYG public pension system does not attenuate the persistence of a growing demographic pressure on the stability of public pension system. As I discussed earlier, PAYG system crucially depends on three key assumptions: high fertility rate, very low share of population older 65+ and high population growth. These assumptions are incompatible with actual demographic parameters and, hence, OECD countries should undertake a drastic transition towards fully-funded pension systems based on individual savings accounts. Otherwise, the growing demographic pressure will inevitably result in the exponential growth of generational debt, creating an enormous deadweight loss for current and prospective generations.
Fully-funded pension system is based on the premise of investing pension contributions into the capital market, earning a compound interest over time. The stock of individual’s lifetime earnings is paid in the form of annuities upon individual’s withdrawal from the labor market. In addition, there is a growing disparity between the implicit return of PAYG public pension system and real rate of return in the capital market. Under realistic assumptions, such as that the marginal product of capital (MPK) is below the welfare-maximizing level and the real rate of return exceeds the implicit return from PAYG system, fully-funded pension system would not create a deadweight consumption loss to the working-age population. In fact, Feldstein and Liebman (2001) derived an analytic solution for the transition to fully-funded pension system in which the transition induces a short-term consumption loss in the next period while, at the same time, it creates a geometrically-growing future consumption for both retired and working-age population.
The only remaining question is whether the real rate of return would compensate the consumption loss of working-age population and, hence, increase the stock of future consumption to all generations. According to Feldstein and Liebman (2001), assuming 6.5 percent inflation-adjusted rate of return, the payroll cost of fully-funded pension system would represent only 27 percent of the payroll cost incured under PAYG public pension system. Tax rate, required to bear the cost of current stock of pension liabilities is 12.4 percent respectively.
According to Congressional Budget Office, the average real rate of return for large-company stocks between 1926 and 2000 is 7.7 percent, 9.0 percent of small-company stocks and 2.2 percent for long-term Treasury bonds. Feldstein (1997) estimated that PAYG implicit rate of return is 2.6 percent.
Assume an individual wants to maximize the lifetime earnings in the capital market. An individual is offered 2.6 percent implicit return from PAYG system. The individual enters the labor market at certain age, say 25, and intends to retire upon the age of 65. Assume he invests $10.000 annually in the capital market to create retirement annuities upon labor market withdrawal. Assuming the implicit rate of return (2.6 percent), the stock of overall annuity would be 10 times the initial investment in 90 years. Assuming the average long-run real rate of return from large-company stocks (7.7 percent), the the overall annuity would be 10 times the initial stock of investment in 31 years. Therefore, the individual would reach the desired level of lifetime earnings at the age of 56 or 9 years before the targeted retirement age.
I assumed the distribution of lifetime investment portfolio is weighted average of availible asset types: large-company stocks (33 percent), small-company stocks (19 percent), long-term corporate bonds (20 percent), long-term Treasury bonds (20 percent) and 3-month Treasury bills (8 percent). According to the average annual real rates of return in the United States (1926-2000), I calculated the weighted average real rate of return (5.247 percent). Investing $10.000 annually at the age of 25 would buy $100.000 annuity at 5.247 real rate of return in 45 years (the age of 70) compared to 90 years (the age of 115) under the PAYG implicit rate of return (2.6 percent). Of course, the time to buy the annuity would shift alongside the changing composition of portfolio.
In addition, OECD countries should immediately increase the effective retirement age. I believe the solution suggested by Gary Becker is both meaningful but sustainable in reversing the growth of generational debt. Becker (2010) suggested “One simple and attractive rule would be to raise retirement age by an amount that makes the ratio of years spent in retirement to years spent working equal to the ratio that existed at the beginning of the social security system.”
When President Roosevelt signed the notorious Social Security Act in 1935, the normal retirement age was 65. However, life expectancy after the age of 65 was significantly lower than is today. In 1940, average life expectancy after 65 in the U.S was 13.7 years. In 2006, it stood at 18.6 years, according to OECD. In 1935, the average life expectancy at birth in the United States was 61.7 years. We assume that individuals in 1935 worked for 35 years and spent 12 years in retirement. The ratio is thus 0.4 (12/ 35=0.34). Today, if individuals retire at the age of 65, they can expect further 18.6 years in retirement. To equalize the ratio to the 1935 level, (18.6/x=0.34), individuals should spend 54.7 years working. The estimate time is an equivalent measure of years required to spend working if PAYG public pension system is left intact. Assuming the individuals enter the labor market at the age of 25, then the expected effective retirement age is the age of 80.
In the long run, PAYG public pension system is unsustainable since demographic parameters do not suffice the assumptions under which the PAYG system is possible without distortions of labor supply incentives. The future of OECD countries will be marked by aging population, lower fertility rates and a growing demographic pressure on public finances. Without bold and decisive pension reform, OECD countries will experience increasing pension deficits and, hence, an explosive growth of generational indebtedness.
Parametric pension reforms are not a substitute for the postponement of paradigmatic pension reform. Thus, implementing the transition to fully-funded pension system essentially requires higher effective retirement age. A comprehensive pension reform cannot be made possible without these measures. At last, but not least, the major challenge in the systematic pension reform in OECD countries to address the burden of global aging, is whether political courage will withstand the pressure of interest groups to maintain the status quo of early retirement incentives. Nonetheless, eliminating early retirement incentives is the essential step towards creating retirement system without perverse incentives to retire too early. Unless political leaders encourage a transition to fully-funded pension system, OECD countries will be unable to withstand the deadly consequences of an enormous generational indebtedness.
By Christopher Briem, on October 22nd, 2010
You know this whole debate over whether to get the pension fund to 50% funding may not matter as much as it may seem. Or at least the problem may be so much worse than we think and that the numbers we assume are good turn out to be wildly optimistic.
The government accounting folks, GASB, are considering a change in pension accounting rules that would bring public pension accounting more in line with private sector accounting. The result, if it happens, is that the calculations of almost all public pension liability will be much much higher than they are now. So Pittsburgh’s billion dollar liability would be something a lot more. What if the number was $2 billion? Any % increase on a billion dollars is real money. If you want to see more on the accounting issue, see this from the WSJ: Board at Center of Pension Dispute Note the Pittsburgh connection in the story that has nothing to do with the city btw.
I was reminded of that because I was reading a paper that just came out. Remember when I compared Pittsburgh’s debt and pension obligations per capita to that in Vallejo, California (which is still plodding through a bankruptcy proceeding) to Pittsburgh. Someone has taken the time to parse those numbers more systematically across a number of cities.
The Crisis in Local Government Pensions in the United States (link)
or if you want crib notes, read the Economist’s coverage of their research.
It does not look like they included Pittsburgh in their research, most likely because the city is so small. No time to parse all that, but in scanning it I think they calculated some liability valuations that use some more normal assumptions on things like the future discount rate. Public pension plans tend to use a very high discount rate of 8%. Actuarial valuations of private sector pension plans almost always use a much smaller value for their discount rate. I suspect that if they did do such a calculation for Pittsburgh would be quite a shock and show a lot higher than the billion dollar liability we are talking about these days. Just imagine where we would be in that case?
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By Winton Bates, on September 30th, 2010
I ended my last post suggesting that it is absurd to provide pensions that are not subject to means tests because this involves taxing people of working age more heavily in order to add unnecessarily to the incomes of wealthy retirees. This raised the question of whether the elderly poor are likely to fare better in the context of the looming pensions crisis in OECD countries under means tested pensions or universal benefits.
This question is most relevant in countries that have not already adopted some form of pay-as-you-go universal aged pensions. Path dependency is involved. Once a country goes down the universal pensions path there are substantial political difficulties in back-tracking because this system encourages each generation of retirees to expect rewards for the taxes they have paid to support the preceding generations of retirees.
I expect that the political economy of how the elderly poor are likely to fare under alternative systems has been researched previously, but I haven’t yet found any papers that are directly relevant. So I will attempt to sketch out some preliminary ideas, based heavily on Australian experience.
One factor that will influence how the elderly poor fare under alternative pension arrangements will be their own political power as a group. This seems to vary greatly between countries depending on such factors as their use of voting rights. The presence or absence of means-testing could make an additional difference to the political power of this group since it identifies pensioners as a particular group of elderly people who have a common interest in lobbying for higher pensions. In that respect, means testing causes the interests of the elderly poor to differ from those of other elderly people.
Pension levels of the elderly poor are also likely to be influenced by the way the political objectives of other elderly people (and of middle-aged people who are planning for retirement) evolve under different systems. Peter Lindert’s analysis of the political economy of the public pension crisis seems to provide a good starting point to consider this. He summarises as follows:
‘At first, up to the 1980s, the rise of the elderly population gave the elderly more political clout in the industrialized OECD countries. The rise in their political strength was one reason why the relative generosity of pensions rose and budgets switched from fully funded pension systems to pay-as-you-go systems, giving one lucky generation higher pensions paid for in part by the younger generation. By the 1980s, the pressure on government budgets had become acute.
From that point on, the further rise in the elderly share of population began to undermine their political strength. True, pension budgets are not declining and are projected to rise a bit more as a share of GDP. Yet, the level of pension support per elderly person is destined to go on dropping as a percentage of the average income of the whole population’ (‘Growing Public’, Vol. 1: 208).
As the number of retirees rises relative to numbers of people in the workforce, their interests are increasingly aligned with those of the community at large in maintaining incentives for the goose to continue laying golden eggs. If excessive demands by retirees result in higher tax rates the adverse consequences for economic growth will be reflected back in their future pension levels.
The demographic transition stemming from lower birth rates and increased longevity is far more advanced in some countries (e.g. Sweden) than in others (e.g. Australia). Signs that the increase in the elderly share of the population may be beginning to undermine their political strength are only now beginning to appear in Australia, with a foreshadowed increase in the age of eligibility for pensions.
Australian experience suggests that when the aging middle classes have political clout they can exercise it to look after their own interests despite means tests for aged pensions. The relaxation of means tests, combined with tax concessions to encourage investment in private superannuation, has resulted in total government support for retirees being remarkably similar across a wide range of income levels (shown here). This suggests that total government support for retirees would be much the same under a flat rate universal system without incentives for private superannuation. Complicating matters further, however, the government has allowed people to access tax-privileged superannuation funds in lump sums prior to pension age. This has provided an added incentive for people to retire early, splurging lump sums and living off accumulated wealth until they become eligible for the aged pension.
As the increase in proportion of elderly people in the population in Australia reduces the per voter political power of this group, I would expect the per voter political power of the elderly poor to diminish to a smaller extent than that of the much larger group who hope to benefit from the private superannuation tax and pension means test rorts. I expect incentives for early retirement implicit in the superannuation arrangements will be an early casualty as attempts are made to contain government spending on retirees. If a choice has to be made at some time in the future between, say, maintaining the current level of the aged pension in real terms and maintaining superannuation tax concessions, I expect that maintaining the aged pension levels would be likely to win the political debate. Similarly, given a decline in grey power on a per voter basis I doubt whether superannuation tax concession would win the political debate if a choice has to be made at some time in the future between maintaining these tax concessions and an overall lowering in income tax rates to promote economic growth.
I suspect that the elderly poor would be less able to protect their interests under a universal pension because the support arrangements would not enable them to distinguish themselves as a group whose economic interests differ from those of other elderly people.
By Winton Bates, on September 24th, 2010
Wagner’s law refers to the proposition of Adolph Wagner (1893) that there is a positive relationship between the level of economic development and the size of government. The underlying idea seems to have been that the demand for services provided by government tends to rise strongly as average incomes rise.
I think Wagner’s law still has a huge influence on the thinking of many economists. This influence is evident in the tendency of many economists to view big government as the norm for high-income countries. For example, it explains why economists pose questions like: Why doesn’t the US have a European-style welfare system? This is an odd question because there is considerable variation in the size of welfare states even within Europe and Swedish-style welfare systems are certainly not common among high-income countries outside of Europe.
The influence of Wagner’s law on the modern thinking of economists seems to rest on it being an empirical regularity or stylized fact. If you overlook the wide variation in size of government in high income countries, Wagner’s law does appear to fit some of the facts. Looking back at the recent history of individual OECD countries, most of them clearly had smaller governments 50 years ago when their average incomes were much lower. Yet, a recent study for the UK and Sweden from the beginning of industrialization until the present (a period of 177 years for the UK) found that Wagner’s law does not hold in the long run. The data are inconsistent with Wagner’s law in the initial industrialization phase (prior to 1860) and since the 1970s (Dick Durevall and Magnus Henrekson, ‘The futile quest for a grand explanation of long-run government expenditure’, INF Working Paper 818, 2010). The Durevall and Henrekson paper also rejects a rival theory – the ratchet theory – that government spending ratchets up in times of crisis (wars, social upheavals, recessions) and then tends to remain at the new higher level. The expansion of government spending in the 25-35 years following WW2 cannot be explained in terms of a ratchet effect.
Some people might try to rescue Wagner’s law by arguing that it always applies at some stage during the process of industrialization. Thus it might be argued, for example, that Wagner’s law will result eventually in the development of big governments in jurisdictions such as Hong Kong and Singapore that have been able to restrain growth in government, even though they now have relatively high average incomes. However, there do not seem to be any reasons why governments of high income countries would necessarily find it harder than governments of medium to low income countries to resist political pressures to become more heavily involved in activities such as funding of retirement incomes and provision of education and health services. Nor would they necessarily find it harder to resist arguments for the social welfare safety net funded by taxpayers to rise more than proportionately as incomes rise.
If we were desperate to rescue Wagner’s law perhaps we could argue that bigger government is an inevitable response to political pressures associated with the demographic transition – declining birth rates and aging population age structures – associated with economic growth. On this basis Peter Lindert argues that we should expect an expansion of the welfare states in East-Asian countries ‘as they age and prosper’. In OECD countries, including Japan, political systems responded to an increase in the proportion of old people in the populations by providing pensions for aged persons. The further aging of populations has led to increased government spending on pensions – a major factor associated with the growth of government spending in high income countries. Lindert asks: ‘Do we really know that China, Singapore and other East Asians will be more resistant to rising transfer budgets than Japan has been, when they approach Japan’s income level and age structure?’ (‘Growing Public’, Vol 1: 221).
My answer to Peter Lindert’s question is that I don’t know how East Asian governments will respond to an increase in grey power. Perhaps they will see what lessons they can learn from the experience of the big government welfare states of Europe and decide that there is a better way to fund retirement incomes. They might even decide that the compulsory savings approach that has applied in Singapore since 1955 is preferable to the absurdity of taxing people of working age more heavily in order to add unnecessarily to the retirement incomes of their wealthy parents.
By Claus Vistesen, on August 24th, 2010
I like this and I definitely think that you should have a look. It raises a lot of interesting and important issues although it is exclusively framed in a US context (not strange thinking of the source).
Untitled from NBER on Vimeo.
The basic message is pretty simple. People should save more and be better at diversifying their assets as well as they should think about how they actually want to dissave (if at all). I agree, but this is also a somewhat self-defeating argument in the context of our current capitalist system. Essentially, when fewer people of working age are asked and incited to save more and longer they spend less and as their share of the population declines they become a drag (in relative terms) on aggregate demand and not a boost (as they are supposed to be). This is a trap then by which a paradox of thrift locks in across generations in the aggregate.
The alternative then? I am not sure. We need to focus on the core too though and essentially do something about the inverted population pyramid as such.
By Bron Suchecki, on July 7th, 2010
a) the acquisition of collectables and personal use assets by SMSF trustees be prohibited;
b) SMSFs that own collectables or personal use assets be provided a transitional period,
up to 30 June 2020, in which to dispose of those assets; and
c) APRA‐regulated funds be exempted from these changes.
Their examples include paintings, jewellery, antiques, stamp collections, wine, exotic cars, golf club memberships, race horses and boats. The list is based on and makes reference to the ATO’s definition of ‘collectables’ and ‘personal use assets’ and this definition includes “coins or medallions”. The inclusion of coins, stamps and medallions and the requirement they be sold within 10 years has caused great concern within the numismatic community. It is the view of coin dealers that the market cannot absorb disposal of the volume of numismatic product held in SMSF over 10 years, resulting in a negative impact on market prices. Now it is possible for a SMSF to “sell” their collection to the individual(s) who benefit from the SMSF, thereby avoiding any impact in the market. However this assumes that such individuals have the cash to pay their SMSF. In addition, the book sale would result in tax consequences for the SMSF.
I would note at this point that those who hold bullion coins through their SMSF should not have anything to worry about. The super review’s reliance on the ATO’s definitions for tax purposes means that bullion should be excluded due to the very clear difference the ATO makes between bullion and collectables for GST purposes in this ruling. I cannot see the super review going against this because it would result in the super treatment conflicting and disagreeing with the ATO’s arguments around bullion/collectables, opening up all sorts of issues for the ATO. The primary problem would be that individual bullion items under $500 would not attract capital gains tax! I can’t see the ATO letting that happen. So on what basis has the super review determined that collectables are not a suitable investment? Initially they say that they believe “that there are certain types of assets that should not be regarded as investments that build retirement savings”.
Now this is contradicted by the fact that their recommendation excludes APRA regulated funds. If collectables were not good enough for SMSF to “build retirement savings” then logically they should also not be good enough for APRA regulated funds. The fact that they make this illogical statement indicates to me they are clutching at justifications for their position.
Later in their document they give the real reason: “The principal concern is that the cumulative regulatory and compliance complexities outweigh the potential benefits of allowing such a liberal investment menu to a sector that is not directly prudentially regulated.”
Now what this is really saying is that they suspect people are abusing the system but it is too much trouble to enforce compliance with the rules so lets just punish everyone and ban it all outright. But what really gets to me is that they are making this ban retrospective. They could have recommended disallowing further investment in collectables rather than forcing the liquidation of existing collections. There is no justice in retrospective law.
The fact is that it is bureaucrats who drafted the detailed legislation that allowed the loophole but instead of admitting their mistake and living with it, they want to perform a 1984 Orwellian expunging of collectable from SMSFs so they can pretend the whole thing never happened. And the result? Forced sales that will depress prices and thus the value of those SMSFs. So much for helping people “build retirement savings”, Mr Cooper.
By Rok Spruk, on February 24th, 2010
From today’s edition of Economist (link):
By D H Smith, on April 20th, 2009
Here’s a new plan for America’s housing problem called the Household Initiative Plan. It’s called that because of all the plans out there it is the only one that asks little of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, or other government agencies besides non-interference in what millions of responsible householders could do for themselves on their own initiative.
My Household Initiative Plan will act to revive the real estate market by attacking three parts of the problem together. It reduces the unsold housing inventory and arrests the decline in home prices by helping liquidity re-form in the real estate market. It does this by making available an untapped source of capital that has previously been hard to access: the IRAs, SEPs, SIMPLE and Keogh plans of American retirement savers. According to the Investment Company Institute, there were over 46 million of these retirement accounts at the most recent survey in 2007, holding an incredible $4.5 trillion. No doubt some has gone in the financial market collapse, but it is still a great deal of money even by current jaded standards.
While it has been possible to buy real estate with IRA funds all along, the heavy restrictions and complicated regulations have kept people from doing so. This plan calls for suspending the restrictions and regulations on the use of IRAs for real estate purchase.
At present, if you buy property through your IRA, you do not own the property, the IRA does. You cannot pay the taxes and maintenance expenses of the property, the IRA has to have enough funds to cover them. You cannot make personal use of the property while the IRA owns it, it must be held only for investment until distribution upon your retirement. You cannot manage the property, the IRA trustee has to designate a manager. You cannot collect rents, they have to be paid to the IRA. You can apply monies from more than one IRA account to the purchase and expenses, but in effect you cannot buy the property with a mortgage simply because no lender is going to have IRA accounts as mortgagors.
At least for the duration of the economic crisis, why not liberalize and simplify the system, so that more people might take advantage of low real estate prices using IRA money that they have but would not think to use for this purpose? Let’s allow people to take as much of their money as they want out of IRAs, SEPs, SIMPLE and Keogh plans, without taxes or penalties, for any real estate purchase – investment property or principal residence, first, second, or seventh home. They can then write contracts and take title as real persons in the regular way, without the complication of having a trustee execute these instruments on behalf of the IRA. Subject to market conditions and substantial down-payments, buyers should be able to get mortgages for regular-way purchases.
Let’s permit buyers using IRA funds to pay property taxes and maintenance expenses and collect any rents of the property either personally if they prefer, or through the IRA if they can. On an investment property, if they receive net investment income personally, it can be taxable, if through the IRA, then not. That will provide an incentive for directing investment income back to the retirement accounts. If the property is used as the principal personal residence of the owners, the normal mortgage interest deduction can apply. If it is a vacation home, then perhaps disallow that, because there has already been a tax advantage conferred by the liberalized use of the IRA monies.
If a property paid for with IRA funds is sold before the owners’ retirement, there are at least two sensible ways of handling the net proceeds. They can either go into another property without any capital gains tax but also without the further complication of a Section 1031 Exchange. Or the proceeds can return to the IRA, without fees, taxes, or penalties. Also – and this is important – if the account holders suspended IRA contributions after their property purchase, they should be permitted to catch up on their contributions and top up their accounts to the full extent that they could have funded their accounts under IRA rules.
The idea of my Household Initiative Plan is to make things easy for people to choose to use their IRA assets to buy real estate now. It removes the preference for financial assets over real assets and places both on a level playing field. Financial experts will object that retirement-minded investors should prefer stocks at today’s low prices. However, real estate is also very cheap now, particularly in popular retirement regions of the southwest and southeast, and there is no way of knowing whether houses or stocks will treat people’s money better in the coming years. As they always say, past performance is not an indicator of future results, but it is noteworthy that even after its sharp decline, the broad real estate asset class has performed better than the S&P 500 over the last ten years.
The key point at this time of financial uncertainty is this: The people’s money in IRA accounts belongs to them, and it should be their free choice to do with as they think best. If their choice can help the national prosperity as they prosper themselves, and at no additional public expense, what could be better for the general welfare?
By Mary Nichols, on October 22nd, 2008
The current financial crisis in the U.S. is hitting everyone hard, perhaps not least the older population. Many in this age group will have taken early retirement in recent years and may now be starting to feel the pinch due to unexpected price rises. Some of these seniors, along with others who just miss the activity and companionship of the workplace, may be considering a return to work on a full or part-time basis.
In fact, the trend towards earlier retirement in recent decades means that the U.S. has a large non-economically active older population in their 60s and early 70s, many of whom hold valuable skills and experience and who enjoy much higher levels of health and fitness at this stage of life than any earlier generation.
Increasingly, employers will need to tap into this older labor pool in order to ease recruitment difficulties. Demographic changes, including a falling birthrate and the aging of the U.S. population, mean that fewer young people are now entering the labor force. As the first cohort of the baby boomer generation reaches retirement age this year, the labor force can be expected to shrink considerably within a short period of time, even taking into account a continuing influx of immigrants.
Aging Workforce
Moreover, the workforce itself is aging, as reflected in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Market Statistics’ data on the employment participation of different age groups. Between 1977 and 2007, it is reported, there was a 101% increase in the employment of workers aged 65 and above, compared with a 59% increase in total employment. By 2016, it is estimated, the number of workers aged 55 to 65 will increase by 36.5%, while the number of workers aged 65 and over will increase by more than 80%, with the latter group accounting for more than 6% of the total labor force by that time.
Simple supply and demand considerations, therefore, suggest that future employment opportunities for older people will be good. Moreover, a raft of legislative and policy changes over recent decades, including the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967 and the elimination of mandatory retirement in 1986, have also theoretically improved recruitment and retention prospects for the country’s seniors.
Yet there is evidence that age discrimination on the part of employers is rampant in the U.S., hindering not only the opportunity for older people to improve their finances but also potentially hampering the ability of the labor market to adjust to the demographic changes. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission statistics show a vast increase in age discrimination lawsuits in recent years, while research studies also provide evidence that age discrimination is widespread, at least in terms of recruitment and displacement, if not in terms of earnings. However, this is often very subtle and more difficult to prove than other forms of discrimination; for this reason it is likely that the statistics vastly under-estimate its true extent.
Benefits of Retirement-Age Workers
Studies have suggested that many employers are reluctant to hire older workers as they fear higher healthcare and insurance costs and hold concerns about their abilities and likely productivity. In fact, while there is some evidence that physical strength steadily declines after the age of 40, research has also indicated that there is little deterioration in mental faculties until over the age of 70. Moreover, published case studies of organizations in the U.S. and Europe that actively recruit and retain older workers, including McDonalds and the book retailer Borders, provide evidence of many benefits of such policies, such as lower rates of absenteeism, lower turnover, higher profits and improved customer satisfaction.
The increased employment of older workers is also likely to bring wider economic benefits to the U.S. by helping to ease the burden on the Social Security and pensions schemes resulting from early retirement patterns and the increased lifespan of Americans. A remaining barrier, however, is the restrictive pension scheme regulations which often deter older people from continuing to work beyond retirement age or re-entering the workforce. The U.S. may be well-advised to consider adopting the type of gradual retirement programs already in place in many Scandinavian and European countries.
References
Adams, S.J. & Neumark, D. (2002). Age Discrimination in U.S. Labor Markets: A Review of the Evidence. Public Policy Institute of California Working Paper No. 2002-8.
Anonymous (2007). Age discrimination: don’t let the joke be on you; Best practices from JD Wetherspoon, the Metropolitan Police and McDonalds. Human Resource Management International Digest, 15, 3, 21-23.
Conference Board of Canada (2006). Canada’s Demographic Revolution Adjusting to an Aging Population.
Crampton, S.M. & Hodge, J.W. (2007). Age Discrimination and Downsizing. The Business Review 7, 1, 341-347.
Dychtwald, K., Erickson, T.J. & Morison, R. (2006). Workforce Crisis : How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent. Harvard Business School Press.
Kantarci, T. & Van Soest (2008). Gradual Retirement: Preferences and Limitations. De Economist, 156, 2; 113-144.
MacNicol, J. (2006) Age Discrimination: An Historical and Contemporary Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McMahan, S. & Philips, K. (1999) America’s Ageing Workforce: Ergonomic solutions for reducing the risk of CTDS. American Journal of Health Studies 15, 199-202.
Santora, J.C. & Seaton, W.J. (2008). Age Discrimination: Alive and Well in the Workplace? The Academy of Management Perspectives 22, 2, 103.
Turner, J.A. (2008) Work Options for Older Americans: Employee Benefits for the Era of Living Longer. Benefits Quarterly, 24, 3, 20-26.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2008). Spotlight on Statistics: Older Workers. July 2008. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2008/older_workers/
By G.L.C., on August 8th, 2008
As America grows old, it is faced with a new threat – that of retirement poverty. Americans are not saving enough for retirement. In an attempt to combat this new threat of retirement poverty, in August 2006 President Bush signed into law the Pension Protection Act. This act was passed to ensure that companies’ pension plans had enough funds to pay their retired employees and requires companies to maintain a higher funded status to cover their liabilities.
The act targets employers who fail to set aside enough reserves to cover current and future pension obligations by defining plans less than 70% funded as “at risk.” To discourage employers from changing plans to meet their funding level rather than changing funding to meet plan needs, it prohibits plans less than 80% funded from increasing benefits, adding new benefits, changing the benefit accrual rate, or changing the vesting rate. Plans that are underfunded must notify their participants.
Critics argue that this act has accelerated the closure of defined benefit plans by companies. Many companies, especially in the beleaguered industries such as airlines, have closed down defined benefit pension plans and offer new employees defined contribution plans. A defined benefit plan is a plan which bases the pension at retirement on the member’s length of service and, usually, his or her average salary at retirement. A defined contribution plan is a plan which bases the pension at retirement on the accumulations in the member’s account at that date. These accumulations are made up of the member’s contributions plus interest and the employer’s contributions on the member’s behalf plus interest.
Companies say that they have closed down the defined benefit plans to decrease volatility. These plans invest about 60% of their assets in equity markets. They are required to maintain a consistent funding level and make up any deficit within seven years. They must value assets on a market to market basis. This adds more volatility to the balance sheet.
The closing down of defined benefit plans is not good for the economy, especially in its present state. Defined benefit plans are an important source of capital as they invest in venture capital. Closing them down could have a crippling affect on the economy – shortage of capital means no new business which in turn means fewer new jobs. The defined contributions plans which have replaced these defined benefit plans do not invest in venture capital.
From an employee’s point of view, the defined benefit plan is much more beneficial than the defined contribution plan. The new plans do not build up enough money. According to the data from Employee Benefit Research Institute based on 2006 figures, an employee after investing for 30 years in a defined contribution plan and retiring in his 60s would receive about $6,450 every year if he lives till he is 90, whereas $100 in a defined benefit plan would earn about $200 more over a 30 year period than the same amount invested in a defined contribution plan.
One way to combat this problem, which could very soon snowball into a major crisis, is to allow pension plans to take a longer view on assets and liabilities to remove short term volatility.
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