Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: The Relationship to Youth Employment

by Jonathan Gruber, David A. Wise

Overview

Many countries have social security systems that are currently financially unsustainable. Economists and policy makers have long studied this problem and identified two key causes. First, as declining birth rates raise the share of older persons in the population, the ratio of retirees to benefits-paying employees increases. Second, as falling mortality rates increase lifespans, retirees receive benefits for longer than in the past. Further exacerbating the situation, the provisions of social security programs often provide strong incentives to leave the labor force.
Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World offers comparative analysis from twelve countries and examines the issue of age in the labor force. A notable group of contributors analyzes the relationship between incentives to retire and the proportion of older persons in the workforce, the effects that reforming social security would have on the employment rates of older workers, and how extending labor force participation will affect program costs. Dispelling the myth that employing older workers takes jobs away from the young, this timely volume challenges a raft of existing assumptions about the relationship between old and young people in the workforce.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226309484
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	04/15/2010
Series:	National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Gruber is the Ford Professor of Economics and head of the Economics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

Table of Contents

Introduction and Summary

Jonathan Gruber, Kevin Milligan, David A. Wise

           

1. The Effects of Early Retirement on Youth Unemployment: The Case of Belgium

Alain Jousten, Mathieu Lefèbvre, Sergio Perelman, Pierre Pestieau

         

2. The Interaction of Youth and Elderly Labor Markets in Canada

Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber, Kevin Milligan

           

3. Social Security, Retirement and Employment of the Young in Denmark
Paul Bingley, Nabanita Datta Gupta, Peder J. Pedersen

           

4. Labor Force Participation by the Elderly and Employment of the Young: The Case of France

Melika Ben Salem, Didier Blanchet, Antoine Bozio, Muriel Roger

           

5. Early Retirement and Employment of the Young in Germany

Axel Börsch-Supan, Reinhold Schnabel