An interesting discussion on child benefits in Ireland

See the note here, while the report is due in the next days.

Life and death expectancies...not the same

Life expectancy is a very common term in debates and research on social security. What do people mean by life expectancy? John Payne from Duque University and his colleagues have performed an experiment, asking individuals the same question, but framed in alternative way. The question can refer to how long an individual expects to live, or to when he or she expects to die. Logically, the answer should be the same, but it is not.

For example, if the question is: "Do you expect to be alive by age 85"?, the answer in more pessimistic than when the question is: "How long do you expect to live?"

You can find the paper here.

The issue is important because it relates to the regulations on mandatory or statutory retirement ages, to the regulation to annuities markets, and to regulations on sales by insurance companies.

Indicators of old-age pension benefits in the Americas

Finally, Chapter 7 of the Americas Social Security Report 2012 is aimed at monitoring pension benefits with a perspective of fairness and financial sustainability. By knowing the value of future pension benefits, we can also have a proxy of the debt incurred by social security institutions and governments through their social security pension programs.

Two mail indicators of pension benefits are examined: replacement rates and pension wealth. The average gross replacement rate across CISS-member countries (exluding U.S. and Canada), salaries and gender is 48.9 (average net replacement rate is 54.3). The average gross pension wealth across the distribution of salaries in all LAC countries is 8.4 times the annual salary (average net pension wealth is 9.3)

Key features of general pension regimes for old age

Chapter 6 of the Americas Social Security Report 2012 outlines the methods used to perform the calculations, describes the common patterns found in the formulas defined by legislations to calculate old-age pensions, and discusses the more critical assumptions needed to reach calculations of the next chapter.

The chapter describes the main features of general pension regimes for old age. Among these features are: design, minimum and maximum pensions, pensionable ages, early and late retirement, and years of contribution.

Work for older adults, technology and health

Chapter 5 of the Americas Social Security Report 2012 discusses the extent to which older adults are able to find decent and dignified work after the age of 60, balancing technological, medical, and preventive advantages, but recognizing that illness and fragility are a really for a large portion of the population.

Under the current structure of social security schemes, individuals do not have the necessary incentives to plan renewing their professional career. To facilitate the renewal of careers is required changes in educational programs and job training, and labor laws.

Collective decisions on retirement

Chapter 4 of the Americas Social Security Report 2012 aims to review the policy debates around the setting of retirement ages. Review the most important approaches and findings of the politics behind retirement decisions. Governments have to make decisions on the amount of taxes and benefits to be paid, the statutory retirement age, and on the conditions offered to adults in pre-retirement ages.

In the Americas there is a pending agenda regarding pension reform to adjust retirement ages vis-à-vis life expectancy increases, as well as standardizing retirement ages across sexes.

Obama drops long-term health care program

The Obama administration has decided to end the long-term health program because they could not find a financiallly sustainable model for it. See more here.

Age discrimination induces earlier retirement

According to research by David Neumark and Joanne Song, reforms to social security to delay retirement ages may be frustrated by age discrimination. Apparently, state-level regulations to prevent age discrimination favored a stronger result in terms of delays in retirement ages after the reforms to the federal pension program of the United States.

Elderly health should be priority: UN

UN warns that due to aging, the health of older adults should be a priority. Complete note here.

Pension program in Peru

The President of Peru announced that this year will start a pension program for people over 65 in poor areas of the country. The program seeks to provide 250 soles (93 dollars) per month. Complete note here.

The aging population is expanding south

There is a steady increase in the proportion of people over 65 in the South, making aging a global phenomenon. This highlights the importance of implementing public policies that ensure benefits delivery of social security to the elderly. On the website of the organization HelpAge International are several articles and news on global aging.

Growth in the labor participation of older adults

There seems to be a long-term increase in the work of older adults.This article by Casey Mulligan refers to the issue, and to how it has been influenced by the economic crisis. The upcoming 2012 Americas Social Security Report, to be published in a few months, will deal with this issue.

UE-Mexico Dialogues

On Monday and Tuesday, held the Seminar on Deepening Health Systems as part of "Dialogues on Social Cohesion Policy between Mexico and the European Union" mentioned in an earlier note. This seminar was attended by experts on the subject of Spain, France and Mexico. By Mexico, the participants were of the IMSS, ISSSTE and the Ministry of Health. The seminar was divided into six different workshops: 1) Structuring of networks, 2) electronic medical record, 3) cross-billing, 4) Health Technology Assessment, 5) drug policy and 6) clinical practice guidelines. The workshops discussed the experience in Europe and Mexico, which facilitated the exchange of ideas, and developing proposals. In the following days we will be talking about specific workshops. Here you can find all information related to these dialogues.

Discussions in Europe regarding maternity leave programs

The EU is currently discussing longer minimum standards for maternity leave, without any agreement (see the note here). In most of the American States, with the exception of the United States that regulates the issue at the state level, there are maternity leave programs with different periods. In general in several countries the period of the maternity leave has been recently increased (such as California). Although, currently the literature of early childhood development (ECD) has stressed the importance of the first years of life of a children as determinants of children future short and long term outcomes, such as school performance, labor force participation, teenage pregnancy, etc., (see the work of Nobel Prize James Heckman) very little is still known about the effect of women work and childcare on children well-being.

New conditionalities in the universal family allowances in Argentina

The beneficiaries of family allowances in Argentina will have to comply with healthcare and school conditionalities to be elegible for the benefit. This is an example of how condicional cash tranfers programs and family allowances should be seen as similar programs. Indeed in Argentina the universal condicional family allowances are managed by ANSES, the social security institution in the country. To read the full note press here.

Long Term Care (LTC)

The new issue of Health Affairs is devoted to this relevant topic. At the CISS we have published some work on projections of demand for LTC and what public policies are needed to attend this increasing demand.

Depression among older adults and the internet

According to research by George and Sherry Ford, access to the internet reduces the incidence of depression among older adults.

Happy birthday...

The Trinidad & Tobago express reports that the NIS has approved the payment of pension benefits for Bridgemohan Jaimungal, just in time for his 102 birthday.

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161517287

Coverage for the self-employed in St. Kitts

Most of the Caribbean and Latin America share the lack of coverage of social security for the self-employed. St. Kitts began in 1996 with a program for them, and in this article we have a view on how it is working:

http://www.sknvibes.com/Commentary/Index.cfm/415

Rural pensions in China

The Chinese government is to introduce a new pension scheme for the country's hundreds of millions of rural workers. Read complete note here