Around the world, people nearing and entering retirement are holding ever-greater levels of debt than in the past. This is not a benign situation, as many pre-retirees and retirees are stressed about their indebtedness. Moreover, this growth in debt among the older population may render retirees vulnerable to financial shocks, medical care bills, and changes in interest rates. Contributors to this volume explore key aspects of the rise in debt across older cohorts, drill down into the types of debt and reasons for debt incurred by the older population, and review policies to remedy some of the financial problems facing older persons, in the US and elsewhere. The authors explore which groups are most affected by debt and identify the factors producing this important increase in leverage at older ages. It is clear that the economic and market environment is influential when it comes to saving and debt. Access to easy borrowing, low interest rates, and the rising cost of education have had significant impacts on how much people borrow, and how much debt they carry at older ages. In this environment, the capacity to manage debt is ever more important as older workers lack the opportunity to recover from mistakes.

Around the world, people nearing and entering retirement are holding ever-greater levels of debt. This volume explores key aspects of the rise in debt across older cohorts, drills down into the types of debt and reasons for debt incurred, and reviews policies to remedy some of the financial problems facing older persons, in the US and elsewhere.

Reform and Responsibility in the Remaking of the Swedish National Pension System is a detailed study through Sweden's national pension system. With Sweden's recently reformed national pension system as the illustrative example, Nyqvist shows how new forms of governance effectively shift responsibility from state level to an individual level. She sheds light on how politicians, technocrats, and bureaucrats work to educate and foster the general public into responsible, hardworking, and financially literate citizens. This ethnographic example of how contemporary power works by way of new forms of governance, Reform and Responsibility in the Remaking of the Swedish National Pension System is an exploration into the art of governing of a large-scale governmental policy process

As the leading edge of the 'Baby Boom' generation attains age 60, members of this unusually large cohort born 1946-66 are poised to redefine retirement - just as they have restructured educational, housing, and labor markets in prior days. Looking ahead, their numbers and energy are sure to have a major impact on national pensions, healthcare, and social safety nets. Contributors to this volume note that 'Boomers' will be better off than their predecessors in many ways, having benefited from the long run-up in housing prices, dramatic improvements in healthcare, and the expanding economy. On the other hand, the generation's sheer size will surely squeeze resources and require new approaches to retirement risk management. This volume paints a complex and fascinating picture as Boomers move into retirement. On average they are in better financial and physical health than prior cohorts, and they can be anticipated to fare better than current retirees in absolute terms. Yet the distribution of retiree income and wealth will be less equal than in earlier years, and in relative terms, many Boomers will be less well off than their forebears. Contributors to the volume use many invaluable models and datasets, including the incomparable Health and Retirement Study (HRS) which affords unique insights into the status of mature adults surveyed at the same age and hence same point in their life cycles, but at three different time periods. Analysts offer new evidence about prospects for health and income during retirement, as well as pensions and housing equity, health, portfolio allocation, and financial literacy. This book offers readers an invaluable and first book-length study of Boomers as they march into retirement. As such, it represents an invaluable addition to the Pension Research Council/Oxford University Press series. It will be especially useful for scholars and policymakers seeking to understand retirement preparedness, to actuaries and tax specialists concerned with retirement system regulation, and to plan sponsors interested in the determinants of work and retirement at older ages.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Growing awareness of real-world shocks including market downturns, health surprises, and labor market readjustment is calling into question the ability of global retirement systems to remain healthy and sustain future retirees. Financial and labor market stresses are shaping how older workers fare as they head into retirement, and how younger workers must prepare financially for their futures. These shocks come on top of long-standing concerns surrounding rising longevity, along with the adequacy and sustainability of public and private benefit systems. This volume explores how these challenges will drive the need for new policy drawing on perspectives of senior and new researchers to the field, as well as exciting new datasets.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Since its green shoots first emerged around 50 years ago, acceptance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations in institutional investing-especially at pension funds-has evolved with distinct shifts in investor preferences. This Pension Research Council volume traces these shifts and their implications, leading up to the present day. The book notes that investors have diverse reasons for devoting attention to ESG criteria when deciding where to invest their money. Some had religious motives, such as Quakers who focused on values; this approach can offer some risk mitigation. Nevertheless, studies that look at whether divestment actually changes companies' behaviors show that this rarely occurs. Accordingly, this book offers a variety of distinct viewpoints from a variety of countries, on whether, how, and when ESG criteria should, and should not, drive pension fund investments. The authors also find that policymakers should consider fund consolidation in private sector retirement systems, along with whether service-provider incentives could be better be aligned with sustainability incentives. For instance, boosting transparency in these markets would help generate better-informed policies, while providing beneficiaries with information relevant to their savings choices.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Notwithstanding the terrible price the world has paid in the coronavirus pandemic, the fact remains that longevity at older ages is likely to continue to rise in the medium and longer term. This volume explores how the private and public sectors can collaborate via public-private partnerships (PPPs) to develop new mechanisms to reduce older people's risk of outliving their assets in later life. As this volume shows, PPPs typically involve shared government financing alongside private sector partner expertise, management responsibility, and accountability. In addition to offering empirical evidence on examples where this is working well, contributors provide case studies, discuss survey results, and examine a variety of different financial and insurance products to better meet the needs of the aging population. This volume will be informative to researchers, plan sponsors, students, and policymakers seeking to enhance retirement plan offerings.

Table of Contents

Private pensions provision in the UK is in crisis. Through a political economy perspective, this book explores how financial security in retirement has been endangered through the response of policy-makers to wider social and economic change, making a unique contribution to our understanding of financialization, neoliberalism, and the welfare state

Ageing populations pose some of the foremost global challenges of this century. Drawing on an international pool of scholars, this cutting-edge Handbook surveys the micro, macro and institutional aspects of the economics of ageing. Structured in seven parts, the volume addresses a broad range of themes, including health economics, labour economics, pensions and social security, generational accounting, wealth inequality and regional perspectives. Each chapter combines a succinct overview of the state of current research with a sketch of a promising future research agenda. This Handbook will be an essential resource for advanced students, researchers and policymakers looking at the economics of ageing across the disciplines of economics, demography, public policy, public health and beyond. Chapter 37 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.