The Retirement Plans and Expectations of Non-retired Canadians Aged 45 to 59
This study examines retirement issues for older working Canadians: income, pension coverage, home ownership status, immigration status, marital status and self-assessed health. It uses data from the 2002 General Social Survey.
Probing the Future of Mandatory Retirement in Canada
ABSTRACT The future of mandatory retirement is at least partly driven by changing demographics. In Canada, these demographics include slowing population growth, rapid aging, declining rates of labour force participation, and slowing labour force growth. After reviewing the demographic trends and considering alternate scenarios in labour force participation, we consider the determinants of early departures from the labour force and suggest scenarios that might reverse these trends. With a decline in labour force entrants, delays in early life transitions, and possible reductions in retirement benefits, a trend to retire later would bring mandatory retirement into question. RÉSUMÉ L'avenir de la retraite obligatoire est au moins en partie motivé par une démographie en constante évolution. Au Canada, les données démographiques indiquent une baisse de croissance de la population, un vieillissement rapide, une baisse du taux de participation à la population active et une croissance ralentie de celle-ci. Après avoir passé en revue les tendances démographiques et analysé des scénarios alternatifs pour ce qui est de la participation à la population active, nous nous penchons sur les facteurs qui déterminent la retraite anticipée, et nous suggérons des stratégies susceptibles d'inverser cette tendance. Puisque le nombre de nouveaux travailleurs est en constante diminution, que les transitions de vie surviennent de plus en plus tard et que les indemnités de retraite risquent de diminuer, une tendance à retarder l'âge de la retraite inciterait à remettre en question l'idée même de retraite obligatoire.
Deliberative Democracy and the Resource Curse: A Nationwide Experiment in Tanzania
Oil and gas discoveries in developing countries are often associated with short-sighted economic policies and, in response, calls to insulate resource management from populist impulses. We report on a randomized experiment testing methods to overcome this apparent tension between sound resource governance and democratic politics. Soon after Tanzania’s discovery of major natural gas reserves, we invited a nationally representative sample of voters to an intensive public deliberation of policy options featuring nationally recognized experts and small-group discussions. Democratic deliberation reinforced the public’s strong preference for rapid spending of gas revenues, but also increased support for various prudential and economically orthodox measures, including independent oversight of gas revenues, limits on government borrowing, and selling gas abroad rather than subsidizing fuel at home. These effects were driven by deliberation per se, rather than a pure information treatment, and show no evidence of contamination by facilitatoror peer-effects in group deliberations. www.cgdev.org Justin Sandefur, Nancy Birdsall, James Fishkin, and Mujobu Moyo