Gender Dimensions of Pension Reform in the Former Soviet Union
Gender Dimensions of Pension Reform in the Former Soviet Union

Author: Paulette Castel

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13:

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The authors analyze the gender implications of pension reform in Kazakhstan, the Kygyz Republic, Latvia, and Moldova. The new systems deliberately penalize early retirement and reward longer careers, so that with no change in behavior or policy, women's pensions will be lower than men's on average. Still, the implicit financial returns for women remain higher on average than returns for men, because of women's longer life expectancy and because of redistributory minimum pensions. Overall, however, the net change in wealth resulting from the reforms will be larger on average for men than for women, because they will work longer and get a larger pension. Women's longer life expectancy means that women can expect to spend the last years of their lives alone. If their pensions are too low because of their work histories, poverty among elderly women may increase.

Gender Dimensions of Pension Reform in the Former Soviet Union
Gender Dimensions of Pension Reform in the Former Soviet Union

Author: Paulette Castel

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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February 2001 Under pension reforms in the former Soviet Union, unisex annuities benefit women more than men because of a major redistribution toward women. But they also penalize women more for shifting toward unpaid household work and may cause increased poverty among lone elderly women--especially in Kazakhstan, which has a high service requirement for the minimum pension and provides no compensation for time out to have children. Castel and Fox analyze the gender implications of pension reform in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, and Moldova. The new systems deliberately penalize early retirement and reward longer careers, so that with no change in behavior or policy, women's pensions will be lower than men's on average. Still, the implicit financial returns for women remain higher on average than returns for men, because of women's longer life expectancy and because of redistributory minimum pensions. Overall, however, the net change in wealth resulting from the reforms will be larger on average for men than for women, because they will work longer and get a larger pension. Women's longer life expectancy means that women can expect to spend the last years of their lives alone. If their pensions are too low because of their work histories, poverty among elderly women may increase. This paper--a joint product of the Gender Board; the Social Protection Team, Human Development Network; and the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Sector Unit, Europe and Central Asia Region--is part of a larger effort in the Bank to understand how the reforms and new institutions being put in place in Eastern European and Central Asian countries affect women's lives and opportunities. The authors may be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected].

Gender Dimensions of Pension Reform in the Former Soviet Union
Gender Dimensions of Pension Reform in the Former Soviet Union

Author: Paulette Castel

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13:

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Under pension reforms in the former Soviet Union, unisex annuities benefit women more than men because of a major redistribution toward women. But they also penalize women more for shifting toward unpaid household work and may cause increased poverty among lone elderly women - especially in Kazakhstan, which has a high service requirement for the minimum pension and provides no compensation for time out to have children.Castel and Fox analyze the gender implications of pension reform in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, and Moldova. The new systems deliberately penalize early retirement and reward longer careers, so that with no change in behavior or policy, women's pensions will be lower than men's on average.Still, the implicit financial returns for women remain higher on average than returns for men, because of women's longer life expectancy and because of redistributory minimum pensions. Overall, however, the net change in wealth resulting from the reforms will be larger on average for men than for women, because they will work longer and get a larger pension. Women's longer life expectancy means that women can expect to spend the last years of their lives alone. If their pensions are too low because of their work histories, poverty among elderly women may increase.This paper - a joint product of the Gender Board; the Social Protection Team, Human Development Network; and the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Sector Unit, Europe and Central Asia Region - is part of a larger effort in the Bank to understand how the reforms and new institutions being put in place in Eastern European and Central Asian countries affect women's lives and opportunities.

The Gender Impact of Pension Reform
The Gender Impact of Pension Reform

Author: Estelle James

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 81

ISBN-13:

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Pension systems may have a different impact on gender because women are less likely than men to work in formal labor markets and earn lower wages when they do. Recent multipillar pension reforms tighten the link between payroll contributions and benefits, leading critics to argue that they will hurt women. In contrast, supporters of these reforms argue that it will help women by the removal of distortions that favored men and the better targeted redistributions in the new systems. To test these conflicting claims and to analyze more generally the gender effect of alternative pension systems, James, Edwards, and Wong examine the differential impact of the new and old systems in three Latin American countries--Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. Based on household survey data, they simulate the wage and employment histories of representative men and women, the pensions they are likely to generate under the new and old rules, and the relative gains or losses of men and women because of the reform. The authors find that women do accumulate private annuities that are only 30-40 percent those of men in the new systems. But this effect is mitigated by sharp targeting of the new public pillars toward low earners, many of whom are women, and by restrictions on payouts from the private pillars, particularly joint annuity requirements. As a result of these transfers, total lifetime retirement benefits for women reach 60-80 percent those of men, and for "full career" women they equal or exceed benefits of men. Also as a result, women are the biggest gainers from the pension reform. For women who receive these transfers, female/male ratios of lifetime benefits in the new systems exceed those in the old systems in all three countries. Private intra-household transfers from husband to wife in the form of joint annuities play the largest role. This paper is a product of the Gender Division, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network.

Growth, Inequality and Poverty
Growth, Inequality and Poverty

Author: Martin Ravallion

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 32

ISBN-13:

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One side in the current debate about who benefits from growth has focused solely on average impacts on poverty and inequality, while the other side has focused on the diverse welfare impacts found beneath the averages. Both sides have a point.

International Provision of Trade Services, Trade, and Fragmentation
International Provision of Trade Services, Trade, and Fragmentation

Author: Alan V. Deardorff

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13:

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The author examines the special role that trade liberalization in services industries can play in stimulating trade in both services, and goods. International trade in goods requires inputs from such trade services as transportation, insurance, and finance, for example. Restrictions on services across borders, and within foreign countries add costs, and barriers to international trade. Liberalizing trade in services could also facilitate trade in goods, providing more benefits than one might expect from analysis merely of the services trade. To emphasize the point, the author notes that the benefits for trade are arguably enhanced by the phenomenon of fragmentation. The more that production processes become split across locations, with the fragments tied together, and coordinated by various trade services, the greater the gains from reductions in the costs of services. The incentives for such fragmentation can be greater across countries, than within countries, because of the greater differences in factor prices, and technologies. But the service costs of international fragmentation can also be larger, especially if regulations, and restrictions impede the international provision of services. As a result, trade liberalization in services can stimulate the fragmentation of production of both goods, and services, thus increasing international trade, and the gains from trade even further. Since fragmentation seems to characterize an increasing portion of world specialization, the importance of service liberalization is growing apace.

Infrastructure Coverage and the Poor
Infrastructure Coverage and the Poor

Author: Kristin Komives

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 56

ISBN-13:

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The poor in most parts of the world may have electricity (especially in urban areas), but they rarely have water, sewer, and telephone services. When they gain access to local services, however, many do decide to connect.

Measuring Poverty Dynamics and Inequality in Transition Economies
Measuring Poverty Dynamics and Inequality in Transition Economies

Author: Erzo F. P. Luttmer

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 42

ISBN-13:

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Estimates of income inequality and the dynamics of poverty are highly sensitive to measurement error and transitory shocks in micro-level data. The apparent high levels of economic mobility in Poland and Russia are driven largely by transitory shocks and noisy data. There is a real risk of an entrenched underclass emerging in these transition economies.

Measuring Equity in Health Care Financing
Measuring Equity in Health Care Financing

Author: Adam Wagstaff

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 28

ISBN-13:

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The World Health Organization's latest World health report proposes an index of fairness in health care financing. The index's chief weakness is that it cannot discriminate among progressive, regressive, and horizontally inequitable health financing systems. An alternative approach proposed in the early 1990s is shown to do a better job.

New Ideas about Old Age Security
New Ideas about Old Age Security

Author: Robert Holzmann

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13:

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Printed on Demand. Limited stock is held for this title. If you would like to order 30 copies or more please contact [email protected] Contact [email protected], if currently unavailable. Policymakers worldwide are struggling to adapt their pension systems to the reality of aging populations, globalization, and tightening budgets. The World Bank actively supports these policymakers by helping them to identify the economic and demographic challenges facing them to highlighting potential policy responses and providing implementation support. New Ideas about Old Age Security is a selection of papers presented at a conference in September 1999 convened by the World Bank and attended by leading academics and policymakers from around the world. These papers, which have subsequently been revised, contain a sample of the most recent thinking in the global debate over pension reform. The papers in this volume explore a wide variety of pension reform issues. Some of the topics covered in this book include new approaches to multi-pillar pension reform, the relevance of index funds for pension investment in equities, and managing public pension reserves.