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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Are contributions to public pension programmes a tax on employment?
— [cover title]: Pensions and employment | | Author(s) | Richard Disney |
| Journal title | Economic Policy, vol 19, no 39, July 2004 |
| Pages | pp 267-311 |
| Source | Download: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/economics/staff/detail... |
| Keywords | Pensions ; Taxation ; Comparison ; International. |
| Annotation | Many studies describe the potentially adverse impact on employment of the payroll costs of financing public pension programmes. Conventionally, empirical studies treat contributions to public pensions programmes as a pure tax. But this approach ignores any future rights to benefits that are perceived by contributors. In fact, public pension programmes contain both an "actuarial" and a "redistributive" component, the former closer to saving, the latter a tax. This paper constructs indicators of the tax component of pension programmes, both between and within generations, across a range of OECD countries and time periods. It uses these measures in a cross-country panel analysis of the determinants of age- and gender-specific economic activity rates. The results reveal robust evidence that when public pension programme contributions are broken down into a tax component and a savings component, the tax component of the payroll contribution reduces economic activity rates among women, while a higher retirement savings component has the opposite effect. There is little evidence that average tax rates, however constructed, have any adverse impact on men's economic activity rates. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-050214001 E |
| Classmark | JJ: WS: 48: 72 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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