Keeping Granny on the Job: Pension Reform and Labor Force Participation in the United States and Chile
About This Event

In an era of increased life expectancies and underfunded pensions, longer work lives may be the best way to increase retirement income security. But what incentives does Social Security present to Americans thinking of working longer? What could reform do to encourage longer work lives?

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AEI resident scholar Andrew G. Biggs will discuss research on Social Security's incentives to delay retirement, while Estelle James, a pension consultant and former World Bank economist, will present findings on how Chile's 1980 pension reform affected labor force participation by seniors. Jagadeesh Gokhale of the Cato Institute will comment.

Agenda
Event Contact Information
Adam Paul
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth St., NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-5852
Media Contact Information
Veronique Rodman
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth St., NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-4871

Speaker biographies

Andrew G. Biggs is a resident scholar at AEI, specializing in Social Security and retirement policy. He previously served as the principal deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), where he oversaw SSA's policy research efforts and led the agency's participation in the Social Security Trustees working group. In 2005, he worked on Social Security reform at the White House National Economic Council, and in 2001, he was on the staff of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security. Mr. Biggs has written about Social Security reform for numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor. He is also the author of AEI's Retirement Policy Outlook series.

Estelle James specializes in pension reform and is currently a consultant for the World Bank and USAID, among others. She was formerly lead economist at the World Bank and director of their Pension Flagship Course. While at the World Bank, she concentrated on public-private sector pension interactions worldwide and was the principal author of Averting the Old Age Crisis: Policies to Protect the Old and Promote Growth (World Bank, 1994). Ms. James was a member of President Bush's Commission to Strengthen Social Security. Before joining the World Bank in 1991, she was a professor of economics at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.

Jagadeesh Gokhale is a Cato Institute senior fellow and an expert on entitlement reform, labor productivity and compensation, U.S. fiscal policy, and the impact of fiscal policy on future generations. He works with Cato's Project on Social Security Choice to develop reforms for programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Mr. Gokhale served in 2002 as a consultant to the U.S. Department of the Treasury and in 2003 as a visiting scholar at AEI. He was the senior economic adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland from 1990 to 2003. His most recent book, Fiscal and Generational Imbalances: New Budget Measures for New Budget Priorities, coauthored with Kent Smetters, drew widespread attention when it was published by AEI in 2003 after the Bush administration declined to include it in the federal budget document for which it had been commissioned. Mr. Gokhale has published several papers in top-tier journals such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, and Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, and in publications of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

AEI Participants

 

Andrew G.
Biggs
  • Andrew G. Biggs is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. Prior to joining AEI he was the principal deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), where he oversaw SSA's policy research efforts and led the agency's participation in the Social Security Trustees working group. In 2005 he worked on Social Security reform at the National Economic Council and in 2001 was on the staff of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security. Andrew’s work at AEI focuses on Social Security reform, state and local government pensions, and comparisons of public and private sector compensation. His work has appeared in academic publications as well as outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post, and he has testified before Congress on numerous occasions. He holds a Bachelors degree from the Queen's University of Belfast, Masters degrees from Cambridge University and the University of London and a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics.
  • Phone: 202-862-5841
    Email: andrew.biggs@aei.org
  • Assistant Info

    Name: Rohan Poojara
    Phone: 202-862-5852
    Email: rohan.poojara@aei.org
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