Children And Pensions Alessandro Cigno Martin Werding by Alessandro Cigno & Martin Werding 9780262033695, 0262033690 instant download after payment.

The rapidly aging populations of many developed countries--most notably Japan andmember countries of the European Union--present obvious problems for the public pension plans ofthese countries. Not only will there be disproportionately fewer workers making pensioncontributions than there are retirees drawing pension benefits, but the youth-to-age imbalance wouldsignificantly affect the total contributive capacity of future generations and hence their totalincome growth. In Children and Pensions, Alessandro Cigno and Martin Werding examine the way pensionpolicy and child-related benefits affect fertility behavior and productivity growth. They presenttheoretical arguments to the effect that public pension coverage as such will reduce aggregatefertility and may raise aggregate household savings. They argue further that public pensions, asthey are currently designed, discourage parents from private human capital investment in theirchildren to improve the children's future earning capacity. After an overview of pension and childbenefit policies (focusing on the European Union, Japan, and the United States), the authors offeran empirical and theoretical analysis and a simulation of the effects of the policies underdiscussion. Their policy proposals to address declines in fertility and productivity growth includethe innovative suggestion that relates a person's pension entitlements to his or her number ofchildren and the children's earning ability--proposing that, in effect, a person's pension could befinanced in part or in full by the pensioner's own children. Alessandro Cigno is Professor ofEconomics at the University of Florence and coauthor of The Economics of Child Labor. Martin Werdingis Head of the Department of Social Policy and Labor Markets at the Ifo Institute for EconomicResearch and the editor of Structural Unemployment in Europe: Reasons and Remedies (MIT Press,2006).
ISBN : 9780262033695