K2SP 3735 - Population Ageing and Pensions

Population ageing is one mega trend transforming our societies. The first part will highlight the substantial differences across OECD countries in the extent of population ageing and in the design of pension systems. It will then show that providing financially and socially sustainable pensions continues to require substantial, often politically perilous, reforms. The second part will deal with inequality in old age. Disadvantages tend to cumulate over the life course across education, health, employment and wages, calling for a comprehensive, life-cycle policy approach. The course will shed light on how countries protect the income of older people against various shocks that happened during the career such as childcare or unemployment breaks or during retirement such as inflation spikes. It may also focus depending on students' preferences, on reasons of discontent among long-term care workers and policy priorities to address them, on active ageing in Southeast Asia and/or on pension provisions for workers in hazardous or arduous jobs.

Hervé BOULHOL

Séminaire

English

A list of required and optional readings for each session will be provided before the beginning of the semester.

Pensions is an area that is both easily accessible and complex. It is easily accessible because everyone has some notion about what a pension system is supposed to deliver and knows people, at least in economically developed countries, who live on pension benefits. It is complex because understanding how a pension system really works goes far beyond the scope of bar-room discussions and requires the use of technical arguments. This economics course aims to provide some in-depth background to better assess pension policies as a key ingredient of social policies more generally.

Spring 2024-2025

Students will form pairs to make an oral presentation of a paper closely related to the course. These presentations will start from Session 3. Proposed papers by students must be validated by the professor in advance, ideally one week before the presentation. All students are supposed to have at least briefly read the paper before it is presented. Slides have to be sent to the class at least one day before the session. Assessment 1, 35%: Joint presentation. Assessment 2, 15%: Participation in the collective debates during presentations and participation during lectures. Assessment 3, 50%: Policy Paper. Each student will write a Policy Paper (max 3,000 words). The main objective of the Policy Paper is to highlight key issues at stake around one ageing-related topic. The chosen topic should refer to some clear economic policy dimension(s). Backed by a review of the main related references, the author should provide an analysis of the different views and related trade-offs, backed as much as possible by key data and published articles dealing with this topic. The author should then offer suggestions of measures or reform that he/she personally recommends in order to address the main identified questions.

The course is divided into two parts as explained in the course description. The organisation of the sessions will be adjusted depending on the number of students. The general idea is that from Session 3 each two-hour session will be divided into one hour for the lecture and one hour for two presentations. The 30-minute presentation slot is broken down as follows: 15 minutes for slides, 10 minutes for Q&A, 5 minutes for the professor's reaction.