Elderly Pension Income Funding

One of the main issues in our aging-society is to achieve an adequate retirement income level for the elderly.

A recently published OECD report called 'Pensions at a Glance 2013' gives a detailed insight in how we are doing.

OECD's report analysis a lot lot of interesting 'pension income' and 'poverty-index' developments. In this blog we'll focus on the relatively income of elderly people as a percentage of the national mean income of the total population .


Relative incomes of people 65-years and older
Let's take a look at the relative incomes of people 65-years and older, per country, in the 'late 2000s' (2007-2010):

Although the OECD-average income level (86.2%) of elderly as a percentage of the national mean income of the total population of a country is (surprisingly?) quite high, there are still some countries, like Australia (65.4%) at the bottom where you wouldn't expect them.....

Elderly: Sources of Income
The next graph makes perfectly clear in which countries the elderly still have to work for the main part of their income.

A lot of countries where people don't have to work for their income depend on a substantial (often not capital funded) public pension system. They are 'at risk' as ageing increases in the next decades.

Relatively robust elderly income countries are countries like The Netherlands, Canada and Israel, where elderly people have a substantial part of their income funded by private pensions or non-pension saving returns.

For more interesting conclusions, download the OECD report.

Links/Sources:
- OECD Pensions at a Glance - Jantoo Cartoons

Are Health Expenditure & Life Expectancy Related?

Does life expectancy depends on how much is invested in in Health?
'Of course' one would say as a first response. But on second thought the relationship between healthcare and life expectancy is rather complex:

• More basic healthcare improves the quality of life and therefore life expectancy
• However, countries with relative bad health conditions urge for relative extra investments in health that at first do not directly pay back in extra  life expectancy
• Developed countries that invest a lot in health might invest more than is needed for an optimal life expectancy

Let's take a look at the last available (2011) Top-20 figures:

As discussed, the relationship between Health Expenditure (HE) as a percentage of a country's GDP from a global point of view, is not directly related to Life Expectancy (LE) at birth in a specific country.

Healthcare Investment Optimum?
If you could speak of a HE-optimum, it would be somewhere around 10,6%.
Higher Health Expenditure costs than 10.6% do not seem to contribute to an increase in life expectancy.

Let's conclude with an interactive chart from Tableau Public:

Learn About Tableau

Sources/Links/Downloads
- Health expenditure, total (% of GDP)
- Life expectancy at birth, total (years)

Not-Working Rate instead of Unemployment Rate

The unemployment Rate in the United States decreased from 7% in November of 2013 to 6.7% in December of 2013.  Good news! Or not?

Unfortunately the unemployment rate is not a beatific 'economy health indicator'.

How come?

Unemployed who no longer search for a job are not 'counted in'.

Do we have a better labor economy health indicator?

An index that would probably be better related to the health of the U.S. economy would be something like the 'Not-Working Rate', implicating the partition of all the people (age 16 or above) that are not working, divided by the number of people that potentially could work.

In fact we can define the 'Not-Working Rate' more or less as 100% minus the 'Employment-population rate'.

'Not Working Rate' = 100% - 'Employment-population rate'

According to chief North American economist for Capital Economics Paul Ashworth,, the employment population ratio is one of the best measures of labor market conditions. This ratio is a statistical ratio that measures the proportion of the country's working-age population (ages 15 to 64) that is employed, inlcuding people that have stopped looking for work.

Enough index-talk discussions... let's look at the Not-Working Rate outcomes.

Not-Working Rates 1948-2013
Let's compare the Not-Working (NW) Rates with the Unemployment  (UE) Rates.

The next chart clearly shows that the NW-Rates are about 4 times the UE rates.
In other words: Unemployment is only a small part of 'Not Working'......

Not-Working Rates 2000-2013
Let's zoom in to the development of the 2000-2013 rates.

Now it becomes clear that the UE Rate keeps up with the NW Rate approximately until the UE Rate in October 2009 hits the 10% ceiling. After that (coincidence?) the UE Rates starts a spectacular downfall from a 10% to a 6,7% level at the end of 2013. However the percentage of people that are not working stabilizes around 41.5% and doesn't  decline!

Let's zoom in to detect this remarkable development..

Conclusion
I'll leave the detailed conclusions up to you.
My main advice is to introduce the 'Not-Working Rate' as an indicator for the labor health of the U.S. economy.

Despite all this labor math, let's hope and pray that people find a job and that the U.S. economy recovers!


Sources/Links:
- BLS Employment-population ratio
- BLS Unemployment rate
- Wikipedia Employment-to-population ratio
-  Actual U.S. Unemployment Rate
- Cartoon