Call for papers : “Ageing in place : Contribution of foreign experiences and international comparisons” for the CNAV journal Gérontologie et société (Gerontology and society). Deadline for submission: June 2, 2020.

As every year, Paris School of Economics organizes Summer schools in June 2020 which bring together several emblematic speakers on different themes.

The Woman and Science Chair organizes an inaugural conference "Women in science: why is it necessary?" March 31 from 4 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at Paris Dauphine University (Paris, France).

The closing conference of the House of Finance will take place on Wednesday March 18 at 6 p.m. on the subject "Responsible Finance" at the University Paris Dauphine (Paris, France).

The Economy nocturnes will take place on Thursday March 26 from 6 p.m. at Science Po (Paris 7th) and will focus on "Does Europe need a new project?".

The OECD is organizing a Launch event on March 9, 2020 for the publication of "How's life in 2020?", their publication on well-being in OECD countries.

Registration by email: wellbeing@oecd.org

The first EIDLL Network seminar on "Ageing, Growth, Inequalities and Intergenerational Relations" will be on Monday 27th, April at the Palais Brongniart from 4.00 pm to 6.00 pm (Paris). Webinar access available. Registration via email : mathieu.nogues@tdte.fr

The University of Lille organizes a conference on "Advances in urban, regional and migration economics" on April 3 and 4, 2020.

The conference of PSE (Paris School of Economics) entitled "Intelligence and Economic Behavior" presented by Aldo Rustichini (University of Minnesota) will take place on April 29th, 2020 at PSE.

The Institute for Public Policy launches the IPP blog! This new format will make popular economic content available and encourage interactive debate, in any case it is the will of the three creators: Antoine Bozio, Pierre Boyer and Julien Grenet. You can find on the blog the study of "The impact of pension reform: the account is not there!"

The 2020th edition of the International Conference on Pensions, Insurance and Saving will be hosted in Université Paris Dauphine, on June 4th and 5th.

Call for papers: “Ageing Society, Well-Being as a substitute to Growth?” – Symposium organized by the EIDLL Network and the chair TDTE on June 8th, 2020 in Paris – Deadline: April 2nd, 2020

Le Mans University is organizing a sustainable development week from 10 to 15 February 2020 which brings together conferences, workshops and a village of alternatives and will give the floor to researchers from the University.

GATE organizes the 7th edition of the IMEBESS (International Meeting on Experimental and Behavioral Social Sciences) conference May 28-30, 2020 in Lyon (France)

Sixth international conference of the Network for Studies on Age, Citizenship and Socio-Economic Integration (REIACTIS) will take place in Metz from February 4 to 6 and will focus on "Inclusive and advanced age society"

Conference "Ageing Society, a turning point in Human History" organized by Chaire "Transitions démographiques, Transitions économiques" on the February 6th, 2020 in partnership with Caisse des Dépôts

The "Capturing inequalities" seminar organized by CITERES (University of Tours) will be held on Thursday, January 30th, 2020 and from 1:30 to 5:30 pm. The session is co-organized by Gulcin Erdi, Martin Lamotte, Anna Perraudin and Nora Semmoud.

The Symposium "The Power to Act in Social Centers. Forms of engagement, politicization and discrimination ”organized by the Federation of Social Centers of the Center-Val de Loire Region and the University of Tours and Orleans will take place on January 9 and 10, 2020 at the Sanitas Life Center in Tours.

19th Journée Louis-André Gerard-Varet - International conference in public economics - will take place at Aix-Marseille School of Economics on June 11-12th, 2020. Deadline for the paper submission: February 3rd, 2020.

11th Annual Hedge Fund and Private Equity Research Conference organized by House of Finance of Paris-Dauphine University on the 16-17th January.

The Foundation of the Academy of Medicine organizes on the 13th January from 14h to 18h the first participative debate of its conference "Society and Aging" intitled "Demography and Economy" in partnership with the Chaire "Transitions démographiques, Transitions économiques".

Inscription via email: vieillissementetsociete@fam.fr

In a March 2020 NBER article, Blanchflower and Graham confirm, contrary to psychologists, the U-shaped curve that well-being follows over the course of a lifetime (i.e., mid-life dip in well-being), particularly in the United States.

Jessica Metcalf, a demographer who studies the spread of infectious diseases, presents in a Mars 2020 article in The New Yorker magazine her views on the Covid-19, particularly regarding what this pandemic can teach us about aging societies.

Gee Hee Hong and Todd Schneider explore in a March 2020 article from the International Monetary Fund Japan's economic policies dealing with its aging and shrinking population.

John Helliwell, Haifang Huang and Shun Wang present in a March 2020 NBER working paper their chapter of the Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust where they analyze the panel of more than 150 countries -and generally over 1,500 national-level observations- and find that government delivery quality is significantly correlated with national happiness, meanwhile democratic quality is not. They also analyze other quality of government indicators and how they are correlated with happiness. Lastly, they summarize what has been learned about how government policies could be formed to improve citizens’ happiness.

Robert Kaestner, Cuiping Schiman and Jason Ward analyze the effect of education on health at different ages in a March 2020 NBER working paper. The main conclusion from their model is that it is unlikely that the relationship between education and health will be constant over the life cycle, and that education is likely to have little effect on health at younger ages when there is little depreciation of the health stock.

Jason Scott, John Shoven, Sita Slavov and John Watson explain in a February 2020 NBER working paper how optimal consumption in the life cycle model declines with age. This finding has major implications for optimal retirement saving. For instance, very low earners may find it optimal to not engage in retirement saving at all.

As big data and AI (also called machine learning) are increasing being employed in the insurance sector, the great benefits that are expected also come with risks. The granularity of data has the potential to give insights into a variety of predictable behaviours and incidents. Given that insurance is based on predicting how risk is realised, having access to big data has the potential to transform the entire insurance production process.

This report examines both the benefits and risks big data and AI can bring to the insurance industry. In particular, this reports discusses how the OECD Recommendation on Artificial Intelligence, and the European Commission’s Independent High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence’s (HLAG AI) Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI should be considered in the context of the insurance sector.

The report concludes with policy areas in which policy makers may consider action in the insurance sector in relation to big data and AI going forward.

Ageing is affecting many OECD countries and, as demographic change progresses, governments will be challenged to identify financially sustainable ways to support the care of ageing populations. This is particularly important for long-term care and health care, as increasing expenditures may become financially unsustainable for many countries while compromising on care options is rarely realistic. Many countries are or will struggle with how to reform their care systems to bring these costs under control, while ensuring that those in need can access the necessary care of quality.

 The OECD is investigating how insurance can support the social security network and, in particular, long-term care and health care systems. Financing the long-term care and health care systems can be burdensome for countries and finding financing solutions that support fiscal budgets is an important consideration with ageing economies and demographic changes.

 This report is a stocktaking of long-term care and health care systems in OECD and non-OECD countries with a strong focus on the nature of the insurance markets that contribute to these systems.

The insurance industry is a major component of the economy by virtue of the amount of premiums it collects, the scale of its investment and, more fundamentally, the essential social and economic role it plays by covering personal and business risks. The OECD annual report "Global insurance market trends" monitors global insurance market trends to support a better understanding of the insurance industry's overall performance and health. 

Created at the beginning of the 2000s, the device for the validation of acquired experience (VAE) did not meet the expected success. Recent legislative developments, combined with the generalization of skill blocks could nevertheless open up new possibilities for development. A Céreq study focused on the construction sector thus encourages companies and OPCOs to use it as an human ressource tool, and more generally recommends a change in representation of VAE.

The Institute for Public Policy launches the IPP blog! This new format will make popular economic content available and encourage interactive debate, in any case it is the will of the three creators: Antoine Bozio, Pierre Boyer and Julien Grenet. You can find on the blog the study of "The impact of pension reform: the account is not there!"

Alexander M. Gelber, Damon Jones, Daniel W. Sacks and Jae Song investigate the impact of the Social Security Annual Earnings Test (AET) on the employment decisions of older Americans. The AET reduces Social Security benefits by one dollar for every two dollars earned above the exempt amount. Using a differences-in-differences design, they find that the employment rate of those predicted to become subject to the AET decreases substantially relative to those not predicted to become subject to it. The point estimates suggest that the AET reduces the employment rate of Americans aged 63-64 by at least 1.2 percentage points.

Effects of the minimum wage on labor market outcomes have been extensively debated and analyzed. Less studied, however, are other consequences of the minimum wage that stem from changes in a household’s income and labor supply. We examine the effects of the minimum wage on child health. George Wehby, Robert Kaestner, Wei Lyu and Dhaval M. Dave employ data from the National Survey of Children’s Health in conjunction with a difference-in-differences research design. They estimate effects of changes in minimum wage throughout childhood. They find evidence that an increase in the minimum wage throughout childhood is associated with a large improvement in child health. A particularly interesting finding is that much of the benefits of a higher minimum wage are associated with the period between birth and aged 5.

Numerous reports show that the world demography will continue to evolve according to two trends: a growing and aging population. These upheavals already have and will have more and more significant consequences on the major economic and social balances, health expenditure and the care of dependency, and this in particular due to the evolution of the ratio active / retired.

Following the restitution conference of the SAPEA (Science Advice for Policy by European Academies) report on aging last June, the Foundation of the Academy of Medicine will organize in 2020, 5 debates and 1 call to associative projects on the same subject. The first subject was "Demography and economy" and here is the restitution of the acts.

Martin Ravallion critically assesses prevailing measures of global poverty. A welfarist interpretation of global poverty lines is augmented by the idea of normative functionings, the cost of which varies across countries. In this light, current absolute measures are seen to ignore important social effects on welfare, while popular strongly-relative measures ignore absolute levels of living. It is argued that a new hybrid measure is called for, combining absolute and weakly-relative measures consistent with how national lines vary across countries. Illustrative calculations indicate that we are seeing a falling incidence of poverty globally over the last 30 years. This is mainly due to lower absolute poverty counts in the developing world. While fewer people are poor by the global absolute standard, more are poor by the country-specific relative standard. The vast bulk of poverty, both absolute and relative, is now found in the developing world. 

David G. Blanchflower draws systematic comparisons across 109 data files and 132 countries of the relationship between well-being, variously defined, and age. He produces 444 significant country estimates with controls, so these are ceteris paribus effects, and find evidence of a well-being U-shape in age in one hundred and thirty-two countries, including ninety-five developing countries, controlling for education, marital and labor force status. I also frequently find it without any controls at all. There is additional evidence from an array of attitudinal questions that were worded slightly differently than standard happiness or life satisfaction questions such as satisfaction with an individual's financial situation. Averaging across the 257 individual country estimates from developing countries gives an age minimum of 48.2 for well-being and doing the same across the 187 country estimates for advanced countries gives a similar minimum of 47.2. The happiness curve is everywhere.

In many models, economic growth is driven by people discovering new ideas. These models typically assume either a constant or a growing population. However, in high income countries today, fertility is already below its replacement rate: women are having fewer than two children on average. It is a distinct possibility — highlighted in the recent book, “Empty Planet” — that global population will decline rather than stabilize in the long run. What happens to economic growth when population growth turns negative?

David G. Blanchflower examines the relationship between unhappiness and age using data from six well-being data files on nearly ten million respondents across forty European countries and the United States. He uses fifteen different individual characterizations of unhappiness including despair; anxiety; loneliness; sadness; strain, depression and bad nerves; phobias and panic; being downhearted; having restless sleep; losing confidence in oneself; not being able to overcome difficulties; being under strain; feeling a failure; feeling left out; feeling tense; and thinking of yourself as a worthless person. He also analyzes responses to two more general attitudinal measures regarding the situation in the respondent's country as well as on the future of the world. Responses to all these unhappiness questions show a, ceteris paribus, inverted U-shape in age, with controls and many also do so without them. The resiliency of communities left behind by globalization was diminished by the Great Recession which made it especially hard for the vulnerable undergoing a midlife crisis with few resources, to withstand the shock.

The American population is aging and changes in the population’s age structure are leading to an aging of the nation’s workforce. In addition, changes to age-specific participation rates are exacerbating the aging of the national labor force. An important challenge for firms and organizations is how does workforce aging affect labor costs, productivity and the sustainability of the organization. Robert L. Clark and Beth M. Ritter examine employer responses to workforce aging including changes in retirement policies, modification in working conditions, the adoption of phased retirement plans, and reforming other employee benefits.

COR (Retirement Orientation Council) publishes its monthly file for December 2019: "Consumption, savings, and use of credit for retirees". In addition to regular monitoring of the standard of living of retirees, this dossier examines how retirees distribute their disposable income between consumption and savings, by also shedding light on the financial aid paid by retirees to their children as well as on the indebtedness of retirees.

Wealth is far from being a homogeneous and monolithic concept. Wealth can be positive or negative (e.g. assets versus debts), more or less accessible (e.g. bank accounts versus housing wealth), and more or less time-constrained (e.g. cars versus bonds and mutual funds). These different forms of wealth are likely to influence in different ways the extent to which individuals are satisfied with their life. It is also likely that this influence varies across countries. In this chapter, Gaël Brulé and Laura Ravazzini characterize four forms of wealth following two axes (positive/negative, mobile/immobile) and link them with the Subjective Well-Being (SWB) of the elderly in Europe. They find that positive mobile wealth is more strongly related to life satisfaction than positive immobile wealth. Negative mobile wealth is also more significantly related to life satisfaction than negative immobile wealth. Possible explanations are discussed using cultural theories.

Claudio Borio, Piti Disyatat and Phurichai Rungcharoenkitkul take a critical look at the conceptual and empirical underpinnings of prevailing explanations for low real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates over long horizons and finds them incomplete. The role of monetary policy, and its interaction with the financial cycle in particular, deserve greater attention. By linking booms and busts, the financial cycle generates important path dependencies that give rise to intertemporal policy trade-offs. Policy today constrains policy tomorrow. Far from being neutral, the policy regime can exert a persistent influence on the economy’s evolution, including on the real interest rate. This raises serious conceptual and practical questions about the use of the natural interest rate as a monetary policy guidepost. In developing the analysis, the paper also provides a specific critique of the safe asset shortage hypothesis – a hypothesis that has gained considerable popularity in recent years.

The law of September 5, 2018 makes the improvement of employee's skills and the security of professional careers a central issue. Organized training is a major tool for responding to this. However, it does not constitute a homogeneous whole. The Defis survey, through the analysis of training titles, provides us with information for the first time on the content of nearly 6 million training courses taken between January 2014 and June 2015 by employees and offers an unprecedented look at the logic use of training in companies.

The employment rate for workers 55 and over has been increasing across the world for the last decade. This creates opportunities for employers to diversify their workforce and retain valuable knowledge and skills, while at the same time posing the challenge of rising labor costs and blocked opportunities for younger workers. This study summarizes in layperson’s terms the economic tradeoffs facing organizations as they design the optimal age structure of employees, as well as surveying recent research on how older workers fit into organizations. Empirical studies show that whereas wage and benefit costs increase with age, there is no conclusive evidence that productivity increases as well. Studies using macroeconomic data find no evidence that older workers block opportunities for the young, but two recent papers using a more disaggregated approach show that firms treat older and younger workers as substitutes. A key challenge facing older workers is the decline over the last 20 years in the odds of becoming a new hire. Although the turnover rate for older workers is much lower than for other age groups, employers have concerns about accommodating their work environment and work schedule preferences. Resume studies show age discrimination also plays a factor, especially for women. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research, including interindustry and international comparisons of microeconomic data on employment by age group and studies that take a close look within organizations that have engaged in innovative activities to hire or retain more older workers.