Search Results

The chapter examines the dynamics of policy responses and their ultimate effectiveness. It identifies typical sequences of policy failures, caused by the misfit between new problems and existing policy legacies, which may generate processes of policy learning that ultimately produce effective solutions; but it also points to instances in which policy learning is blocked by conflicts of interest or by divergent cognitive orientations in multi‐actor institutional settings. Of equal importance are sequences of lateral spillovers, where the solutions to problems in one policy area generate new problems that subsequently must be dealt with in adjacent policy areas. In the 1970s and 1980s, these spillovers were most important in countries where the rise of open unemployment was mitigated by resort to early retirement and disability pensions. In analysing these sequences of policy failure, learning, and problem displacement, the chapter also compares and assesses the greater or lesser effectiveness of the policy responses actually adopted and identifies successful countries that were able to adjust to the challenges of the open economy without abandoning their welfare‐state goals.

This chapter, which examines the relationship between the disability pension program and the labor force participation of middle-aged and old people in Japan, shows that mortality and other health measures are largely unrelated to the disability program participation rates. Although major changes in the disability program slightly expanded the eligibility for the disability insurance program, program participation remains very low. Thus, the effect on labor force participation is very limited in Japan compared with some European countries with a high take-up rate inducing early retirement.

About 20% of German workers retire on disability pensions. Disability pensions provide fairly generous benefits for those who are not already age-eligible for an old-age pension and who are deemed unable to work for health reasons. In this paper, we use two sets of individual survey data to study the role of health and financial incentives in early retirement decisions in Germany, in particular disability benefit uptake. We show that financial incentives to retire do affect sick individuals at least as much as healthy individuals. Based on 25 years of individual survey data and empirical models of retirement behavior, we then simulate changes in the generosity of disability pensions to understand how these changes would affect retirement behavior. Our results show that making the disability benefit award process more stringent without closing other early retirement routes would not greatly increase labor force participation in old age.

This chapter discusses the key parameter of labor-supply elasticity of older workers using the 1993 pension reform in France and the implications of the long-run effects of the 1993 and 2003 reforms. It cites a study on the pension reform of 1993 implemented by the government of Edouard Balladur that restricted the conditions for obtaining a full pension in order to reduce the amount of pensions by increasing the period taken into account to compute the reference wage. It also shows an overall assessment of the impact of the 1993 French pension reform. The chapter confirms the strong correlation between social security parameters and labor-force participation displayed with cross-country data.

This chapter examines long-term development in subjective well-being or overall life satisfaction before and after retirement. Several hypotheses are considered: (1) early retirees suffer from retirement, compared with later retirees, because they are more likely to have been forced out of jobs involuntarily, or by declining health; (2) early retirees benefit from retirement, compared with normal retirees, because they can make use of generous early retirement incentives not available to those who may retire later; or (3) there is no difference between early and normal retirement because both types of individuals have chosen retirement optimally. The study finds that at ages younger than sixty, those who are retired are on average much less happy than those who are working. The difference is mainly due to a composition effect, as these early retirees are generally covered by disability pensions.

This chapter examines Denmark’s Social Disability Pension along with other programs for early retirement from the labor force, demonstrating a strong relationship between labor force participation, employment, and unemployment on one hand, and non-health-related programs for early retirement on the other, for everyone aged sixty years or older. No clear relationship is found between labor market performance and health indicators.

This chapter examines the circumstances of households that contain disabled members in the context of proposed reforms to the main income support programme for disabled people, the Disability Support Pension. After briefly reviewing the Australian policy context, it compares the economic circumstances of those who have a disability or long-term health condition with those who do not. It then reviews community attitudes to mutual obligation for unemployed people and disabled people (a major theme in the welfare reform debate). The final section summarises the main conclusions of the chapter.

In 1886, after moving to Colorado and marrying Etta Dunbar, Kelso described himself, even as he struggled to get a disability pension for the worsening effects of his wartime injuries, as “one of the happiest of men.” But with news of the Haymarket Affair in Chicago, where labor radicals were executed as bomb-throwing terrorists, he plunged into another public crisis. Angrily rethinking some of his core beliefs, he decided that Haymarket had exposed the hopeless rot of the American political and economic system. In his last years, after writing his autobiography, he turned to the story of the nation he had fought and bled for, looking for a better way forward. His last book, Government Analyzed, completed by his wife after his death in 1891, reinterpreted the Civil War and offered a defense of anarchism. His last lectures described Jesus as an anarchistic reformer, hoping for a heaven on earth.