Children And Pensions

An analysis of the effect of public pension schemes on a country's fertility rate and a proposal for policies to reform pension coverage in light of this. The rapidly aging populations of many developed countries--most notably Japan and member countries of the European Union--present obvious problems for the public pension plans of these countries. Not only will there be disproportionately fewer workers making pension contributions than there are retirees drawing pension benefits, but the youth-to-age imbalance would significantly affect the total contributive capacity of future generations and hence their total income growth. In Children and Pensions, Alessandro Cigno and Martin Werding examine the way pension policy and child-related benefits affect fertility behavior and productivity growth. They present theoretical arguments to the effect that public pension coverage as such will reduce aggregate fertility and may raise aggregate household savings. They argue further that public pensions, as they are currently designed, discourage parents from private human capital investment in their children to improve the children's future earning capacity. After an overview of pension and child benefit policies (focusing on the European Union, Japan, and the United States), the authors offer an empirical and theoretical analysis and a simulation of the effects of the policies under discussion. Their policy proposals to address declines in fertility and productivity growth include the innovative suggestion that relates a person's pension entitlements to his or her number of children and the children's earning ability--proposing that, in effect, a person's pension could be financed in part or in full by the pensioner's own children.

Considers (78) S. 662.

This booklet provides an overview of the income security programs ofHuman Resources Development Canada.

Excerpt from Public Pensions to Widows With Children: A Study of Their Administration, in Several American Cities These principles had long been held by many members Of this Con ference, but they were then for the first time crystallized into compact form and published so Widely as to awaken all parts of the country to a realization of their importance. Many went away from that Con ference convinced of their universal application, and took active steps to reduce the population of existing child-caring institutions and to prevent the creation of any new ones in their several communities. The resolutions adopted by this White House Conference were with out doubt the strongest single factor in developing the sentiment for widows' pensions which has found such strong and widespread expres sion during the last few months. The policy of some of the better-equipped private societies of pro yiding a lump sum by the week or month, often called a pension, without which the mother and her dependent children would be separated, has during the last few years gained wide favor, and the demand 'in the nation for the general adoption of such a policy has rapidly grown. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.