Employee benefits journal最新文献

{"title":"Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value in Terms of the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998: Lessons from the International Labour Organisation and the United Kingdom","authors":"Shamier Ebrahim","doi":"10.17159/1727-3781/2016/V19N0A1230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/1727-3781/2016/V19N0A1230","url":null,"abstract":"Equal pay is an area of employment law that is complex and not easily understood. This complexity is recognised by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which notes that equal pay for work of equal value has proved to be difficult to understand, both with regard to what it entails and in its application. Amendments have been made to the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998 (EEA) to include a specific provision to regulate equal pay claims in the form of section 6(4)-(5) of the EEA. The amendments were made in terms of the Employment Equity Amendment Act 47 of 2013, which came into effect on 1 August 2014 by presidential proclamation. Prior to section 6(4), the EEA did not contain a specific provision regulating equal pay claims. Claims could be brought in terms of section 6(1) of the EEA, which prohibits unfair discrimination on a number of grounds. The recent amendments to the EEA in the form of section 6(4)-(5) (including the Employment Equity Regulations and the Code of Good Practice on Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value ) in respect of equal pay claims is a response to the ILO's criticism of South Africa's failure to include specific equal pay provisions in the EEA. Section 6(4) of the EEA provides for three causes of action in respect of equal pay. They are as follows: (a) equal pay for the same work; (b) equal pay for substantially the same work; and (c) equal pay for work of equal value. The first two causes of action are not difficult to understand as opposed to the third cause of action, which is complex. The ILO has recognised the complexity of the third cause of action, \"equal pay for work of equal value\". In Mangena v Fila South Africa 2009 12 BLLR 1224 (LC), the Labour Court remarked in the context of an equal pay for work of equal value claim that it does not have expertise in job grading and in the allocation of value to particular occupations. This article will deal with the third cause of action only, \"equal pay for work of equal value\". The purpose of this article is to critically analyse the law relating to equal pay for work of equal value in terms of the EEA (including the Employment Equity Regulations ) and evaluate it against the equal pay laws of the ILO and the United Kingdom, which deal with equal pay for work of equal value. Lastly, this article seeks to ascertain whether the EEA (including the Employment Equity Regulations ) provides an adequate legal framework for determining an equal pay for work of equal value claim.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74340325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Public Wealth Maximization: A New Framework for Public Fund Fiduciary Duties","authors":"Paul Rose","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2805427","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2805427","url":null,"abstract":"This article challenges the commonly evoked fiduciary obligation to strictly maximize fund value by asking a foundational question: who are the proper beneficiaries of public fund trustees’ fiduciary duties? The article makes a pivotal claim: public funds, including public pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, owe their duties to the government and current and future citizens collectively, and not to individual benefits claimants. This analysis is driven by the fact that in practice individual claimants function more like senior creditors than the residual claimants that are the typical recipients of fiduciary duties. This reframing of fiduciary duties in public funds has dramatic consequences for the investment policies of the funds. Most importantly, a shift in the locus of fiduciary duties to the government and current and future generations requires fund managers to more fully consider the externalities accompanying their investments, which should serve to help them fully and accurately price their investments. Private investors might ignore certain effects, such as uncompensated harms from pollution or depleted natural resources, because the government absorbs the costs of such externalities. A strict fiduciary duty to act in the interests of the fund would obligate a private investor to ignore such externalities, so long as they do not negatively affect the returns of the fund’s investments. The government that absorbs the cost of these externalities, however, should view investments differently, with a view to minimizing negative externalities, particularly those that are significantly more expensive to remediate than to prevent. As a result of this analysis, it follows that public funds should benefit from less constrained fiduciary standards that would encourage more investment in sustainable enterprises and long-term projects.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"85 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76841677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Are Early Claimers Making a Mistake?","authors":"A. Munnell, Geoffrey T. Sanzenbacher, A. Webb, Christopher M. Gillis","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2814571","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2814571","url":null,"abstract":"Using Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data and Latent Class Analysis for three cohorts (those born in 1931-1936, 1937-1941, and 1942-1947), this paper explores: 1) who claims Social Security benefits at age 62; 2) what percentage of households claiming at 62 are unprepared for retirement; and 3) whether the unprepared early claimers were pushed into claiming through job shocks and/or poor health or simply decided to take benefits early. Looking across three cohorts makes it possible to see whether these patterns have changed as the average claim age has increased and pension coverage has shifted away from defined benefit (DB) plans. That is, have those who have moved out of age-62 claiming been educated, financially prepared households or unprepared households that have recognized the need to delay claiming?","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"165 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80423721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Economic Consequences of Pension Underfunding: Evidence from the Retirement Systems of Alabama","authors":"D. Smith, John A. Dove","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2795692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2795692","url":null,"abstract":"There is a strong consensus among economists and public pension experts that many public pensions are substantially underfunded and that absent fundamental reform many state and local governments will have to resort to some mixture of tax increases, budget cuts, and/or bailouts. While many nation-wide empirical studies have evaluated the growth in unfunded pension liabilities, few academic case studies have been done for individual public pension systems to analyze specifically how these unfunded liabilities have accumulated and to formulate concrete avenues for reform. Therefore, this paper provides a case study of the Retirement Systems of Alabama. We find that Alabama is similarly situated relative to a number of other public pension systems in the U.S. when it comes to issues with accounting standards, transparency and oversight, and the use of economically targeted investments. Based on this work, we offer recommendations for reforming public pensions.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"87 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85627681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Shortchanged in Retirement: Continuing Challenges to Women's Financial Future","authors":"Jennifer Brown, Nari Rhee, Joelle Saad-Lessler, D. Oakley","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2779813","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2779813","url":null,"abstract":"This new analysis finds that women are far more likely than men to face financial hardship in retirement. Women are 80 percent more likely than men to be impoverished at age 65 and older.Shortchanged in Retirement, The Continuing Challenges to Women’s Financial Future, finds that across all age groups, women have substantially less income in retirement than men.For women age 65 and older, the data indicate that their typical income is 25 percent lower than men. As men and women age, men’s income advantage widens to 44 percent by age 80 and older. Consequently, women were 80 percent more likely than men to be impoverished at age 65 and older, while women age 75 to 79 were three times more likely to fall below the poverty level as compared to their males counterparts. The report also finds that in 2010, men received $17,856 in median retirement income from a pension, whereas women received $12,000 — or 33 percent less.There is also a gender gap in defined contribution or 401(k)-type retirement account assets. In 2014, the median amount accumulated in these savings accounts was $36,875 for men and $24,446 for women — or 34 percent less, according to Vanguard.The key findings of this report are as follows:1. Women are 80 percent more likely than men to be impoverished at age 65 and older, while women between the ages of 75 to 79 are three times more likely than men to be living in poverty. Widowed women are twice as likely to be living in poverty than their male counterparts. White and black women are almost twice as likely to be living in poverty than their male counterparts during retirement.2. Labor force participation among women aged 55 to 64 climbed from 53 percent in 2000, to 59 percent in 2015, with a peak of 61 percent in 2010. Women may be working longer in order to make up for lower retirement savings over their careers and to offset investment losses from the Great Recession.3. While women were somewhat more likely than men to work for employers that offered retirement plans in 2012, there is a gap in eligibility that limits women’s participation in these plans. Since 2006, this gap has narrowed and now women and men have the same overall participation rates. Women’s higher rates of part-time employment and shorter job tenure may make it more difficult to meet employers’ eligibility requirements for retirement plans compared to men.4. The share of women working for employers that offered only defined contribution (DC) retirement plans shrank from 49 percent in 2009 to 46 percent in 2012. The median value in women’s DC retirement accounts was one-third less than that of men.5. Even though the median household incomes of individuals aged 65 and older has increased, women have 26 percent less income than men. While both women and men have decreased their reliance on Social Security since 2009, the proportion of income from defined benefit (DB) pensions has remained steady, supplying about one-fifth of income for both women and men. Older men","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"140 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86150081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Banking Without Guarantees? Public Policy Considerations Concerning Insurance Company Retained Asset Accounts","authors":"Jill Bisco, Chad G. Marzen","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2740130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2740130","url":null,"abstract":"Insurer utilization of retained asset accounts in life insurance have drawn increased regulatory supervision in recent years. This article discusses retained asset accounts, current regulation of the accounts at the state level, and legal issues which have arisen in reported court decisions. It recommends a number of mechanisms states can implement in statutes to increase transparency concerning retained asset accounts to life insurance beneficiaries.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76655583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What Triggers People to Save for Retirement?","authors":"P. Brockman, D. Michayluk","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2736693","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2736693","url":null,"abstract":"We investigate retirement saving decisions through interviews and a broad survey in four countries that investigates what influences changes in savings behaviour. We identify a number of previously unidentified factors that are associated with increased savings. We find that approximately 40% of the respondents in our survey would increase their retirement savings when they receive a raise or they pay off all their debts. We propose these positive triggers be enhanced through employer offered savings matching or other incentives at the time of a raise and financial institution financial planning and product offering when there is an increase in income or when a loan or credit cards are paid off. We also identify negative triggers that may be used to trigger additional savings although we recommend this approach be used with caution. For a subset of the population, fear is a factor that can lead to an increase in savings after observing hardship stories or other events. The difficulty with negative triggers is that the increase to financial health through additional savings may do more harm than good if the increase in fear causes other problems related to physical or emotional health. We suggest focusing on positive triggers.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75729659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Health Capacity to Work at Older Ages: Evidence from the U.S","authors":"Courtney C. Coile, Kevin S. Milligan, D. Wise","doi":"10.3386/W21940","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W21940","url":null,"abstract":"Public programs that benefit older individuals, such as Social Security and Medicare, may be changed in the future in ways that reflect an expectation of longer work lives. But do older Americans have the health capacity to work longer? This paper explores this question by asking how much older individuals could work if they worked as much as those with the same mortality rate in the past or as much as their younger counterparts in similar health. Using both methods, we estimate that there is significant additional capacity to work at older ages. We also explore whether there are differences in health capacity across education groups and whether health has improved more over time for the highly educated, using education quartiles to surmount the challenge of changing levels of education over time.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"1983 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89674464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Historical Welfare Analysis of Social Security: Whom Did the Program Benefit?","authors":"K. Sommer, William B. Peterman","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2674608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2674608","url":null,"abstract":"A well‐established result in the literature is that Social Security reduces steady state welfare in a standard life cycle model. However, less is known about the historical quantitative effects of the program on agents who were alive when the program was adopted. In a computational life cycle model that simulates the Great Depression and the enactment of Social Security, this paper quantifies the welfare effects of the program's enactment on the cohorts of agents who experienced it. In contrast to the standard steady state results, we find that the adoption of the original Social Security generally improved these cohorts' welfare, in part because these cohorts received far more benefits relative to their contributions than they would have received if they lived their entire life in the steady state with Social Security. Moreover, the negative general equilibrium welfare effect of Social Security associated with capital crowd‐out was reduced during the transition, because it took many periods for agents to adjust their savings levels in response to the program's adoption. The positive welfare effect experienced by these transitional agents offers one explanation for why the program that may reduce welfare in the steady state was originally adopted.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83012531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Welfare Cost of Perceived Policy Uncertainty: Evidence from Social Security","authors":"Erzo F. P. Luttmer, Andrew A. Samwick","doi":"10.1257/AER.20151703","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/AER.20151703","url":null,"abstract":"Policy uncertainty reduces individual welfare when individuals have limited opportunities to mitigate or insure against the resulting consumption fluctuations. We field an original survey to measure the degree of perceived policy uncertainty in Social Security benefits and to estimate the impact of this uncertainty on individual welfare. Our central estimates show that on average individuals are willing to forgo 6 percent of the benefits they are supposed to get under current law to remove the policy uncertainty associated with their future Social Security benefits. This translates to a risk premium from policy uncertainty equal to 10 percent of expected benefits.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80952128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}