OCIRP and Viavoice Live debates on October 6, 2021 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on "Employee caregivers: how to help them?" 

The 2nd conference of the Solidarity Observatory of La Mutuelle Générale will take place on September 28th, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., live on the website Les Echos Le Parisien. It will focus on "How to encourage stakeholders to act in favor of employee-caregivers ?". 

Cafés de l'IReSP on Thursday, September 30 from 1:00 to 1:30 p.m. - presentation of the research project by Amélie Carrère and Emmanuelle Cambois "Care of the elderly: an analysis of the Determinants of Institutionalization or Maintenance at Home (DIMADO)"

Canadian Public Policy is issuing a call for papers, abstracts and articles on the topic of "Retirement, Longevity, Pensions and Long-Term Care". The deadline for submission is October 1, 2021. 

Presentation of the paper by Rufei Guo (Wuhan University) on "The demography of the great migration in China" during the IFLAME research seminar on September 9, 2021, from 12:00 to 13:20.

Launch of the first call for projects of the Priority Research Program on Autonomy on "Vulnerabilities and Inclusion" and will close on November 2, 2021. The Priority Research Program on Autonomy has a budget of 30 million euros. 

Launch of the Cedefop project, in France and Italy, to look at whether the 2016 European recommendation, "Upskilling pathways: new opportunities for adults" to improve vocational training for low-skilled adults, is being met in light of recent vocational training reforms and programs. 

Rendez-vous de l'Insee: demography and population projections on September 14th 2021

Call for papers from the Gerontology and Society Journal on peripheral professions "Interactions, collaborations and professionalization". Deadline for submission: February 28, 2022. 

In an NBER paper, Anne Case and Angus Deaton show that deaths from hopelessness, morbidity and emotional distress continue to rise in the United States. These increases are largely borne by those without a college degree, the majority of American adults. For many less-educated Americans, the economy and society no longer provide the basis for a good life, all-cause mortality in the United States varies by education level: it declines for those with higher education and increases for those without a degree, which is not the case in other rich countries. They examine the increasing prevalence of pain, hopelessness and suicide among Americans without a degree. Pain and despair created a basic demand for opioids, but the escalation of addiction came from the pharmaceutical industry and its political enablers. They then examine the evidence on whether or not deaths due to despair increased during the Covid pandemic. More broadly, excess mortality due to Covid did not increase the ratio of all-cause mortality rates for those with and without a degree, but rather replicated the pre-existing mortality ratio.

Patricia Loncle and Tom Chevalier have published a new book: Une jeunesse sacrifiée ? published by PUF/Vie des idées. Is France sacrificing its youth? While the pension reform and the health crisis have focused attention on the problems of the end of life, it is mainly today's youth who will bear the economic consequences. With the highest unemployment and poverty rates in the French population, young people are already the first victims of inequalities. However, public action in France is hardly effective in combating these inequalities, either in the education system or in social policies. Consequently, the reinforcement of these inequalities can lead to frustration and anger, but can also lead young people to propose alternatives to existing public action. By qualifying the thesis of the "sacrificed generation", this book reminds us that youth is crossed by multiple fractures and considers the long-term effects of these inter and intra-generational inequalities on our democracy. 

Jean-Hervé Lorenzi, Alain Villemeur and François-Xavier Albouy have published a new book: La question intergénérationnelle (The Intergenerational Question), published by Cent Mille Milliards. In the light of the global pandemic, this book examines the intergenerational contract and the links between generations. It proposes public policies to meet the challenges of an aging society, to reduce inequalities and to return to the path of peace and solidarity. 

In an NBER article on the macroeconomic prospects of ageing and welfare state policymaking, Razin and Horst Schwemmer explain that population ageing could lead to structural changes centred on a shrinking labour force and increasing dependence on the generosity of the welfare state. Welfare state policy related to ageing involves both fiscal and migration issues. The authors use a policy-oriented general equilibrium model to help understand the mechanism governing the provision of social benefits, taxation of labour income, taxation of capital income, and restrictions on migration of low and high skilled workers due to population ageing. The results show that a more generous welfare state is accompanied by a more liberal migration policy, an incentive-compatible with the interests of majority voters.

In a paper entitled "Demographics, Wealth and Global Imbalances in the 21st Century", Auclert, Malmberg, Martenet and Rognlie quantify the general equilibrium effects of population ageing on wealth accumulation, expected asset returns and global imbalances. By combining population forecasts with household survey data from 25 countries, they measure the compositional effect of ageing, how a changing age distribution affects wealth relative to GDP, keeping the age profiles of assets and labour incomes fixed. Using a nested-generation model, they predict that population ageing will increase wealth-to-GDP ratios, reduce asset returns and worsen global imbalances throughout the 21st century. These findings extend to a richer model in which bequests, individual savings and the tax and transfer system all respond to demographic change.

In a recent NBER study, Friedson and al. examine the effects of cigarette taxes, smoking, and long-term health. Medical experts have argued forcefully that cigarette smoking is detrimental to health, which has led to a myriad of anti-smoking policies. However, the association between smoking and mortality may be driven by unobserved factors, making it difficult to discern the underlying causal relationship over the long term. In this study, they analyze the effects of cigarette taxes experienced in adolescence, which are likely exogenous, on smoking and mortality in adulthood. A 1$ increase in cigarette taxes during adolescence is associated with an 8% reduction in adult smoking and a 6% reduction in mortality. The effects on mortality were most pronounced for heart disease and lung cancer.

In a recent study, Ellison, Scott and Sinclair analyze the economic value of targeting aging. The majority of children born today in high-income countries can expect to live to a ripe old age, making aging well an important priority. This column calculates that there are diminishing returns to further improvements in U.S. life expectancy and that it is more attractive to achieve compression of morbidity. Treatments that delay aging in ways that improve both health and life expectancy are particularly valuable. Targeting aging rather than single diseases exploits synergies between health and lifespan, acts on multiple disease categories and reduces competing risks. A virtuous circle in aging leads to an increasing value of delaying aging the more successful we are at delaying aging. They show that the compression of morbidity is more valuable than any additional gain in life expectancy. 

Eichenbaum, Rebelo, and Trabandt show that the Covid epidemic disproportionately affected poor people's economic well-being and health. To disentangle the forces that generated this outcome, they construct a model that is consistent with the heterogeneous impact of the Covid recession on low- and high-income people. According to this model, two-thirds of the inequality in Covid deaths reflects pre-existing inequality in rates of comorbidity and access to quality health care. The remaining one-third comes from low-income people working in occupations with a high risk of infection. Finally, they assess the health-income trade-offs associated with tax transfers to the poor and mandatory containment policies.

In a recent study, Shah Goda, Jackson, Hersch Nicholas, and See Stith analyze the impact of Covid-19 on older worker employment and social security spillovers in the United States. The Covid-19 pandemic and associated mitigation strategies have taken a heavy economic toll on large segments of the U.S. population. The authors show that for older and disabled workers, the effects may be more persistent and fiscally costly than the impacts experienced by young, healthy workers, due to the Social Security spillover. They find that employment among 50-61-year-olds declined by 8.3 per cent, while employment among 62-70-year-olds declined by 10.7 per cent. For those aged 50-61, unemployment and exits from the labour force for reasons other than disability and retirement accounted for 63 and 30 per cent of the decline in employment, respectively. For those aged 62 to 70, the two largest components of the reduction were unemployment (50%) and labour force exits due to retirement (30%). 

Jones, Courtemanche, Denteh, Marton, and Tchernis studied the impact of implementing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) policies on the participation of poor seniors (over 60) in this food program. They show that these policies, which extend program eligibility to the elderly, modestly increased participation in these programs and increased significantly participation in the program by non-seniors. 

Shoven, Slavov and Watson studied in an NBER paper how the indecision of Social Security reform affects younger people. The Social Security trust fund will be depleted by the early 2030s and the government is still undecided about what to do about the depletion. Indecision about whether to raise contributions, cut benefits or shift the retirement age leads to mistakes by young and middle-aged retirement savings cohorts. The authors estimate that the value of knowing today the reform implemented in 2035 would amount to 2 months of income. 

Hamermesh, Myck and Oczkowska compared the behaviors of widows and older married women in European countries. Widows performed fewer household tasks and devoted less time on meal preparation. Results show that widows experience less time stress than older married women but are less satisfied with their lives. U.S. longitudinal data show that becoming widowed is associated with an increase in depression. 

Mitchell, Clark, and Lusardi examined the changing financial circumstances of the elderly in an NBER paper. The authors find that 1. real income has remained stable between the time seniors approach retirement age, become retirees, and age. And 2. that wages take a smaller share of income, while Social Security benefits and retirement savings make up a larger share of seniors' income. 

Arrondel, Gautier, Lemmonier and Soulat have published a study on expectations and perception of retirement in France: exploitation of the 2020 wave of the Pat€r survey. Compared to 2012, the French have a better knowledge of their personal rights. This increase was lower among French people with lower incomes. Younger people have more doubts about the future of the retirement system; 25% of respondents expect the retirement system to no longer exist when they retire. The public is very divided on the proposed reform of the universal retirement system. Respondents say they would rather delay the retirement age to restore the financial balance of the pension system than increase contributions from working people or lower pensions. 

A study by Zeltzer, Einac, and Balicer examines the effect of increased access to telemedicine on the cost and outcomes of care using data from Israel during the country's first lockdown in March and April 2020. The use of telemedicine increased sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, and will likely remain in the coming years, with more healthcare delivery likely to mix in-person and remote care. However, concerns remain that remote care may reduce the quality of care or increase costs. The results show that access to telemedicine results in a small increase in primary care use and no significant increase in overall costs. The authors found no evidence of decreased accuracy or increased likelihood of adverse events. This study should be expanded in the future as telemedicine is likely to be part of the future of health care delivery.

In a recent study, Elliot Ash analyzes the overall effect of mandatory retirement on court productivity in U.S. states between 1947 and 1994. Faced with the extreme old age and even dementia of some judges, some U.S. states have imposed a mandatory retirement age. But this policy would risk losing experienced judges who are still productive in their work. He notes that court productivity increased by more than 25% after the introduction of mandatory retirement. There may even be a team effect of ageing whereby the presence of older judges slows the pace of work in the court.