A History of the German Public Pension System: Continuity amid Change provides the first comprehensive institutional history of the German public pension system from its origins in the late nineteenth century to the major reform period in the early twenty-first century. Relying on a wide range sources, including many used for the first time, this study provides a balanced account of how the pension system has coped with major challenges, such as Germany's defeat in two world wars, inflation, the Great Depression, the demographic transition, political risk, reunification, and changing gender roles. It shows that while the pension system has changed to meet all of these challenges, it has retained basic characteristics-particularly the tie between work, contributions, and benefits-that fundamentally define its character and have enabled it to survive economic and political turmoil for over a century. This book also demonstrates that the most serious challenge faced by the pension system has consistently been political intervention by leaders hoping to use it for purposes unrelated to its mission of providing the insured with secure and adequate retirement income.

Population ageing and slower economic growth have raised serious questions about the willingness and ability of governments to maintain current social policies. Within this new reality, discussions on the future of public pensions have been predominant in political debates across Europe. This book explains why certain countries have been able to radically transform their pension system while others have simply altered parameters. To answer this question an extensive comparative analysis, including more than 60 interviews, was conducted in Belgium, France, Sweden and the UK. This empirical data provides an interesting contrast between reforms. Parametric reforms have stemmed from the creation of pension administrations outside the traditional state apparatus in France and Belgium and the resulting inclusion of social partners; while the state administrations of Sweden and the UK where debates have been internalised have led to programmatic reforms. Two controversial findings of this book include an explanation for the lack of influence on the part of the labour movement in the 1994/98 Swedish reform and a rejection of arguments claiming that policy change will be minimal with coalition governments. Finally the conclusion seeks to extend the applicability of the model to other industrialized countries. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of public policy, specifically social policy, political economy, the welfare state and comparative politics.

How different are fe/male life courses, and why? What is good, bad, or best for women under these or probable future circumstances? This ground-breaking book explores the difficulties women face in working life and retirement - and asks what can be done to achieve more gender equality and fairness for women and men alike. Leading pension experts from across Europe analyse the basic challenges through single and comparative country studies. The editors provide facts and figures on women's lives, work and pensions and draw theoretical lessons and practical policy conclusions from the studies and gendered statistical indicators.

Intense media coverage of the public pension funding crisis continues to fuel heightened awareness in and debate over public pension benefits. With over $3 trillion in assets currently under management, the ramifications of poor oversight are severe. It is important that practitioners, researchers, and taxpayers be well-advised regarding any concerns, but until now traditional references have provided very little coverage.

State and Local Pension Fund Management provides a basic and systematic discussion of all the major issues facing those responsible for state and local public retirement programs. The author begins with a technical overview that examines the history of the public pension system. He then proceeds to examinations of pension benefit design, actuarial valuation and funding methods, financial reporting, and pension asset investment management.

These technical discussions prepare readers for the second component, which is a focus on policy. The book delves into issues such as managing public pension programs in the political context of public budgeting, pension benefit reforms, and the fairness and sustainability of pension benefits in the public sector. In addition, the author dedicates a chapter to a detailed discussion of other postemployment benefits (OPEBs) such as life, disability, and long-term care insurance, as well as healthcare subsidies. The book concludes by exploring the dilemma over how to ensure financial security for public employees in their retirement without putting additional pressure on state and local government finance.

By understanding the major issues involved in managing retirement benefit programs in the public sector, readers will gainthe knowledge needed to make informed decisions regarding specific fund management. They will also be better able to participate in the debate over the larger issues regarding pension fund policy and reform measures.

America's elderly population is soaring, presenting numerous challenges for policymakers in the United States. Other developed nations with aging populations face similar problems. There will be fewer workers relative to retirees in coming decades and the elderly are also expected to live longer. The impact of these demographic changes in the United States is likely to be challenging, especially for America's system of social security. Solomon offers new perspectives on how to meet the future costs of social security without bankrupting the next generation or gravely damaging the U.S. economy. He also shows, more broadly, how to provide for the financial security of America's senior populations.

Over the past two decades, primary responsibility for providing a financially adequate retirement has shifted from the federal government and employers to individuals. For most Americans, social security alone will not provide enough income. Most companies have shed their pension plans for 401(k) plans, to which companies and employees contribute, and in which participants must make their own investment decisions. Consequently, achieving financial security in retirement has increasingly become one's personal responsibility.

Solomon deals extensively with the politics of social security, past and present. He examines the presidential leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, both of whom revived the nation's spirit in times of crisis, both of whom introduced economic policies that remain controversial to the present day. He also considers in detail contemporary efforts to rethink social security, focusing on fundamental reform of the social security system and the expansion and simplification of employer-sponsored retirement plans and individual retirement arrangements.

Richly textured, informed, and informative, Financial Security and Personal Wealth encompasses history, demography, political economy, public finance, social policy. It will be of interest to policymakers, economists, and political scientists in the United States and elsewhere.

Start-to-finish guidance toward building and implementing a robust DC plan Successful Defined Contribution Investment Design offers a comprehensive guidebook for fiduciaries tasked with structuring and implementing a 401(k) or other defined contribution (DC) pension plan. More than a collection of the usual piecemeal information, this book seeks to offer a complete, contemporary framework for plan design, together with tested methodologies and analytic techniques to help streamline plan monitoring, management and improve participant outcomes. Examples from plan sponsors provide on-the-ground insight while suggestions from DC consultants add expert perspective. Views from ERISA expert counsel provide additional understanding along with input from academic thought leaders. Finally, investment evaluation and analysis is joined with participant savings and asset allocation data to look prospectively at potential outcomes, and case studies illustrate real-world implementation of objective-aligned asset allocation such as custom target-date strategies. Though the focus is primarily on U.S. plan design, author perspectives from countries including Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada provide relevant and helpful viewpoints for both new and experienced plan fiduciaries. For the vast majority of workers, DC plans have replaced traditional defined benefit pension plans as the primary source of employer-provided retirement income. This book provides comprehensive guidance to help you construct a plan to help workers to retire with confidence. * Adopt a framework for DC evaluation and structure * Learn new methodologies for investment choice evaluation * Use the innovative PIMCO Retirement Income Cost Estimate or PRICE to help quantify the amount of money a worker needs to create and stay on track to building a real income stream in retirement * Examine methodologies used at major companies in the U.S. and globally DC plans are the most rapidly growing retirement market in the world, yet sources of consolidated structural and analytical guidance are lacking. Successful Defined Contribution Investment Design fills the gap with a comprehensive handbook that covers the bases to help you develop an objective-aligned defined contribution plan.

Insurance is an important - if still poorly understood - mechanism for dealing with a broad variety of risks associated with modern life. This book conducts an in-depth examination of one of the largest and longest-established private insurance industries in Europe: British life insurance. In doing so, it draws on over 40 oral history interviews to trace how the sector is changed since the 1970s, a period characterised by rampant financialisation and neoliberalisation. Combining insights from science and technology studies and economic sociology, this is an unprecedented study of the evolution of insurance practices and an invaluable contribution to our understanding of financial capitalism.

Public pensions in the United States face an impending funding crisis in the wake of the financial crisis and the COVID-19 recession. Many cities and states will struggle to meet these growing obligations without major cuts in government services, reneging on pension promises, or raising taxes. This Element examines the development of the pension crisis through the lens of political economy. We analyze the knowledge and incentive problems inherent in the institutional structure, governance, and accounting of public pensions. We conclude by offering several institutional, governance, and reporting reforms to address the pension funding crisis.

Why do governments backtrack on major policy reforms? Reversals of pension privatization provide insight into why governments abandon potentially path-departing policy changes. Academics and policymakers will find this work relevant in understanding market-oriented reform, authoritarian and post-communist politics, and the politics of aging populations. The clear presentation and multi-method approach make the findings broadly accessible in understanding social security reform, an issue of increasing importance around the world. Survival analysis using global data is complemented by detailed case studies of reversal in Russia, Hungary, and Poland including original survey data. The findings support an innovative argument countering the conventional wisdom that more extensive reforms are more likely to survive. Indeed, governments pursuing moderate reform - neither the least nor most extensive reformers - were the most likely to retract. This lends insight into the stickiness of many social and economic reforms, calling for more attention to which reforms are reversible and which, as a result, may ultimately be detrimental.

From two leaders of the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement, a bold, contrarian guide to retiring at any age, with a reproducible formula to financial independence. A bull***t-free guide to growing your wealth, retiring early, and living life on your own terms. Kristy Shen retired with a million dollars at the age of thirty-one, and she did it without hitting a home run on the stock market, starting the next Snapchat in her garage, or investing in hot real estate. Learn how to cut down on spending without decreasing your quality of life, build a million-dollar portfolio, fortify your investments to survive bear markets and black-swan events, and use the 4 percent rule and the Yield Shield - so you can quit the rat race forever. Not everyone can become an entrepreneur or a real estate baron; the rest of us need Shen's mathematically proven approach to retire decades before sixty-five.

Private pensions provision in the UK is in crisis, yet it is not the crisis often depicted in political and popular discourses. While population ageing has affected traditional pensions practice, the imperilment of UK pensions is due in fact to the peculiar way policy-makers have responded to wider social and economic change. Pensions are a mechanism for managing failed futures, yet this function is being impeded by the individualization of provision. This book offers a political economy perspective on the development of private pensions, focusing specifically on how policy elites have sought to respond to perceived crises of demographic change, under-saving, and fund deficits, and in doing so have absorbed imperatives to subject individuals to a market-led regime under the influence of neoliberal ideology. This terrain is explored through chapters on the historical and comparative context of UK pensions provision, the demise of collectivist provision, the rise of pensions individualization and the state's role as facilitator and regulator in this regard, and the financial and economic context in which pensions provision operates. By placing the UK system in a comparative context of pensions reform agendas across the world, this book offers an original understanding of the unique temporality and materiality of pensions provision as a set of mechanisms for coping with generational change and forecast failures in capitalist economies. It also presents a nuanced account of the extent to which the state acts to anchor the process of pensions rematerialization and, crucially, concludes by outlining a coherent and radical programme of progressive pensions reform.

Perhaps the greatest long-term challenge facing modern economies is how to pay for the living expenses and care costs of the elderly. Following policy decisions made in Australia in the 1990s, a substantial part of the pension requirements of the next cohort of retirees will be met from savings accumulated during working years. The effective management of these savings is crucial. If they are invested wisely, the assets available to fund pensions and care will grow; if not, available funds may turn out to be insufficient. Unfortunately, there is considerable evidence worldwide that the management of funds attracts rent-seeking behaviour by the financial services industry which erodes much of the potential return. Australia introduced compulsory superannuation contributions for its working population in 1991, leading to a proliferation of funded schemes that are largely run by the private sector. Complexity, and many degrees of separation between fund members and those who manage their funds, have emerged as serious problems. Combined with weak competitive pressures and governance systems, and insufficient legal and regulatory constraints, the result is a system that does not serve its members well. This book provides a detailed evaluation of the Australian experience, highlights the extent to which the financial services industry has extracted rents from Australian pensioners, and how and why this occurred. Based on original empirical research, and examination of industry reviews and relevant literature, the book demonstrates the numerous principal-agent, conflict of interest and rent extraction problems that have emerged in Australia. The book makes suggestions for how these problems can be addressed in Australia, and also provides lessons for other countries wishing to enact pension reform.

Occupational pensions are major participants in global financial markets with assets of well over $30 trillion, representing more than 40% of the assets of institutional investors. Some occupational pension funds control assets of over $400 billion, and the largest 300 occupational pension funds each have average assets of over $50 billion. The assets of UK pension funds are equivalent to UK GDP, and US pension fund assets are 83% of US GDP. These statistics highlight the importance of pension funds as major players in financial markets, and the need to understand the behaviour of these large institutional investors. Occupational pensions also play an important, but neglected, role in corporate finance. For example, US company pension schemes account for over 60% of company market value, and yet they are often ignored when analysing companies. This book is based on the substantial body of evidence available from around the world on a topic that has become increasingly important and controversial in recent years. Written for practitioners, students and academics, this book brings together and systematizes a very large international literature from financial economists, actuaries, practitioners, professional organizations, official documents and reports. The underlying focus is the application of the principles of financial economics to occupational pensions, including the work of Nobel laureates such as Merton, Markowitz, Modigliani, Miller and Sharpe, as well as Black. This book will give readers an up-to-date understanding of occupational pensions, the economic issues they face, and some suggestions of how these issues can be tackled. The first section explains the operation of defined benefit and defined contribution pensions, along with some descriptive statistics. The second section covers selected aspects of occupational pensions. The focus of these first two sections is on the economic and financial aspects of pensions, accompanied by some basic information on how they operate. This is followed by three further sections that analyse the investment of pension funds, the corporate finance implications of firms providing pensions for their employees, and annuities.

The traditional (final or average salary) pension that employers have provided their employees has suffered a huge decline in labor force coverage in the United Kingdom and the United States, and less severe declines in Canada and elsewhere. The traditional pension provides a precious measure of retirement security by paying retirees an annuity for life. This study compares developments in the countries just named and in Australia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland to explain the forces behind the decline of the traditional pension and to contrast the experience of public sector employer-provided plans, where it remains dominant. Given the great value of the longevity insurance that the traditional plan provides, and the risks its diminished coverage entails, the book proposes a set of measures that either stem the decline or endow defined contribution pensions with some of the attributes of the traditional plan.

As the world's population lives longer, it will become increasingly important for plan sponsors, retirement advisors, regulators, and financial firms to focus closely on how older persons fare in the face of rising difficulties with cognition and financial management. This book offers state-of-the-art research and recommendations on how to evaluate when older persons need financial advice, help them make better financial decisions, and to identify policy options for handling these individual and social challenges efficiently and fairly. This latest volume in the Pension Research Council series, draws lessons from theory and practice, and will be of interest to employees and retirees, consumers and researchers, and financial institutions working to design better retirement plan offerings.

Alexandra Hennessy examines an area of Europeanization that has been largely ignored by political analysts: the development of an internal market for workplace pensions. This book offers an analysis of what is at stake in workplace pension reforms, tracing how different states approached them and how national political economy models have shaped actors' bargaining strategy at the EU level. Employing statistical analysis, formal modelling, and in-depth case study research, Hennessy highlights the role of informal signalling and communication processes in designing a common pension market. This book offers a theoretical framework that accounts for historical institutionalism, informal signalling processes and discourse in the Europeanization of workplace pensions - a must-read for students of comparative social and public policy, comparative politics and European politics.

Originally published in 1953 as a textbook for actuaries-in-training, this book gives an overview of the actuarial and legal background to pensions and funds for orphans and widows. It will be of value to anyone interested in the development of pension provision. Crabbe and Poyser also supply a concordance between the Income Tax Act of 1952 and earlier legislation affecting pensions. This book will be of value to anyone interested in the development of pension provision.

Empire of the Fund is an expose and examination of the way we save now. With the rise of the 401(k) and demise of the pension, the United States has embarked upon the richest and riskiest experiment in our financial history. Over the next twenty years, nearly eighty million baby boomers will retire at a pace of ten thousand per day. The hypothesis of our experiment is that millions of ordinary, untrained, busy citizens can successfully manage trillions of dollars in a financial system dominated by wealthy, skilled, and powerful financial institutions, many of which have a record of treating individual investors shabbily. The key tools in our 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts are mutual funds, which have ballooned to hold more than $16 trillion. But these funds pose dangers to our savings in three ways: through structural vulnerabilities that give money managers the incentive to focus on marketing over investing; through the very human challenges of managing our savings decades into the future; and through the peril of financial professionals behaving badly, to our economic harm. Though Americans often hear of the importance of low fees in fund investing, few are aware of the astonishing panoply of ways that some financial advisers have illegally diverted money out of mutual funds: from abetting hedge funds to trade after the legal deadline, to inflating the assets on which they are paid a percentage, to paying kickbacks for brokers to sell their funds. This book will forewarn and forearm Americans by illustrating the structural flaws, perverse incentives, and litany of scandals that have bedeviled mutual funds. And by setting forth a pair of policy solutions to improve Americans' financial literacy and bargaining power, it will also attempt to safeguard our individual financial destinies and our nation's fiscal strength.

Using data from more than 40,000 soldiers of the Union army, this book focuses on the experience of African Americans and immigrants with disabilities, investigating their decision to seek government assistance and their resulting treatment. Pension administrators treated these ex-soldiers differently from native-born whites, but the discrimination was far from seamless - biased evaluations of worthiness intensified in response to administrators' workload and nativists' late-nineteenth-century campaigns. This book finds a remarkable interplay of social concepts, historical context, bureaucratic expediency, and individual initiative. Examining how African Americans and immigrants weighed their circumstances in deciding when to request a pension, whether to employ a pension attorney, or if they should seek institutionalization, it contends that these veterans quietly asserted their right to benefits. Shedding new light on the long history of challenges faced by veterans with disabilities, the book underscores the persistence of these challenges in spite of the recent revolution in disability rights.

Underfunded pension liabilities threaten the fiscal stability of many cities. While Detroit's bankruptcy has dominated the headlines, the problem is widespread. With ongoing battles in many localities, policymakers are increasingly turning their attention to the legacy issues surrounding the funding of pensions. Public Pensions and City Solvency addresses this complex fiscal challenge and presents strategies to achieve financial sustainability. Writing in a direct, readable style for a professional as well as an academic audience, expert contributors provide incisive analyses and practical approaches to navigating the fiscal morass in which many cities find themselves. Richard Ravitch, former lieutenant governor of New York, writes the Foreword and Robert P. Inman and Susan M. Wachter provide the Conclusion. The book's three chapters examine the issue from different key perspectives: Joshua D. Rauh, a leading scholar in the study of unfunded pension liabilities, provides an economist's perspective; Amy B. Monahan, a renowned authority in public employee benefits law, illuminates the legal framework; and D. Roderick Kiewiet and Mathew D. McCubbins, visionary political scientists, put the crisis and its economic and legal implications into context and lay out the necessary framework for reform. The problems that arise from underfunded public pensions are only going to escalate. Public Pensions and City Solvency is a unique resource for decision-makers, policy-makers, and researchers and a timely addition to the evolving debate over what constitutes sustainable solutions. Contributors: Robert P. Inman, D. Roderick Kiewiet, Mathew D. McCubbins, Amy B. Monahan, Joshua D. Rauh, Richard Ravitch, Susan M. Wachter.

For many of us, Social Security doesn't seem to be the good deal our parents enjoyed. Pensions from previous generations have either disappeared or been completely reengineered and, to make matters worse, we have just gone through the worst decade for investing since the Depression. As the 'Baby Boomer' generation reaches the age of 65, Americans are faced with the confounding problem of how to pay for a growing retired population with increasingly limited financial resources.Yet the historical evolution of these current dilemmas has been full of signs indicating that we would arrive ultimately at where we are now. In Predictable Surprise, Sylvester J. Schieber explains how retirement systems work and the implications for various generations of continuing our current course. He lays the background for the establishment of retirement programs in the United States, focusing on the beginning of employer-sponsored pensions and on Social Security. The motivations for setting up these programs decades ago still persist, despite current developments. Schieber explains how the original architecture of Social Security has changed in ways that have led to current concerns about financing and equity of the program. In contrast, he shows how Social Security has at the same time defied change to accommodate to social and economic circumstances that have evolved since its 1935 inception. Schieber discusses benefits that Social Security has delivered over time, how the system is changing before our eyes, and the costs that it has exacted from various segments of our society. Employing clear and concise language, Schieber's Predictable Surprise describes the nuances of the political economics of retirement in an approachable and applicable manner-just when we need it the most.

This 2006 book treats two vital public policy issues: how should distributions from individual accounts be regulated, and how can the market for private annuities function better? It provides a comprehensive survey of the issues that arise when contributors to individual accounts become eligible for distributions. It also addresses the questions of whether annuitization or other restrictions on distributions should be mandatory, and if so, can the provision of annuities be privatized? Its analytical framework is applicable to a broad range of countries. Given the diminishing importance of public pensions around the world, the growing number of the elderly, and the increasing importance of defined contribution plans, the voluntary demand for private annuities is going to grow. It is vital that annuities be reasonably priced and that the annuity market be effectively regulated. The book investigates both issues, and proposes reforms to enhance the efficiency of the annuity market.

Pension systems are under serious pressure worldwide. This pressure stems not only from the well-known trend of population ageing, but also from those of increasing heterogeneity of the population and increasing labour mobility. The current economic crisis has aggravated these problems, thereby exposing the vulnerability of many pension schemes to macroeconomic shocks. This book reconsiders the multi-pillar pension scheme against the background of these pressures. It adopts an integral perspective and asks how the pension system as a whole contributes to the three basic functions of pension schemes: facilitating life-cycle financial planning, insuring idiosyncratic risks and sharing macroeconomic risks across generations. It focuses on the optimal balance between the various pension pillars and on the optimal design of each of the schemes. It sketches a number of economic trade-offs, showing that countries may opt for different pension schemes depending on how they react to these trade-offs.

Using data from more than 40,000 soldiers of the Union army, this book focuses on the experience of African Americans and immigrants with disabilities, investigating their decision to seek government assistance and their resulting treatment. Pension administrators treated these ex-soldiers differently from native-born whites, but the discrimination was far from seamless - biased evaluations of worthiness intensified in response to administrators' workload and nativists' late-nineteenth-century campaigns. This book finds a remarkable interplay of social concepts, historical context, bureaucratic expediency, and individual initiative. Examining how African Americans and immigrants weighed their circumstances in deciding when to request a pension, whether to employ a pension attorney, or if they should seek institutionalization, it contends that these veterans quietly asserted their right to benefits. Shedding new light on the long history of challenges faced by veterans with disabilities, the book underscores the persistence of these challenges in spite of the recent revolution in disability rights.

The central research objective of the dissertation is to assess the suitability of Social Responsible Investments (SRIs) as well as alternative investments for the strategic asset allocation of German Pension Insurance Funds (Pensionskassen). Using a Vector Error Correction model, we estimate the data generating process of the underlying input variables. A bootstrap simulation allows generating future return paths of the underlying portfolios. These return distributions will subsequently be used as input for different asset allocation strategies.The empirical results of our research study offer valuable conclusions: (1) SRI-structured portfolios consistently perform better than conventional portfolios, (2) including alternative investments has a beneficial effect on the risk-return distribution and (3) derivative overlay structures mitigate downside risk exposure without impacting average fund performance. In terms of alternative allocation models, (1) high-equity portfolios lead to an increase in return volatility without sufficiently compensating investors with higher returns, (2) hedging against price increases by engineering a portfolio with inflation-suitable assets yields mixed results, (3) a portfolio composition that combines derivative overlay strategies for both equities and corporate bonds and uses SRI-screened assets as underlying generates the best results.