Research
High rents increasingly becoming a driver of financial fragility for low-income older households
Policy Note | In the United States, high overall rates of home ownership among households aged 55–64 obscure a vital reality. Many low-income older households risk financial fragility because they are renters and high rent burdens inhibit their ability to save for emergencies. Even middle- and high-income households who own their own homes risk housing-related financial fragility due to high mortgage debt. Overall rates of financial fragility, which include non-housing debt and emergency...
Policy Note | Unpaid care work — the vast majority of such work in the United States — is primarily shouldered by economically vulnerable people. The costs associated with unpaid care work compound existing economic insecurity, leading to higher rates of poverty in old age. It is essential to support informal caregivers by recognizing caregiving as work and expanding their access to social safety net programs and providing paid family care leave.
Policy Note | Up to 40 percent of middle-income workers are at risk of downward mobility into poverty or near-poverty in retirement because of an inefficient retirement system that disproportionately benefits those with high incomes. Universal retirement accounts and providing workers with more equitable and better targeted tax incentives are among the best methods to supplement Social Security and prevent downward mobility in retirement.
Working Paper | Social Security “Catch-Up” contributions would allow workers to contribute an additional 3.1 percent of salary, starting at age 50, in return for enhanced benefits. The program would modestly reduce defacto elderly poverty and reduce the Social Security shortfall in the short run and be approximately actuarially neutral over 75 years.
Book Review | Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World, Daniel Sherrell
The subject of Warmth, written by a 26-year-old as a letter to his unborn child, is the climate crisis. But the climate crisis is never referred to by name. Instead, it is called “The Problem.” And though The Problem animates the book, Warmth is also a memoir—a book about memory, justice, and the future.
The economy-climate interaction and an appropriate mitigation policy for climate protection have been treated in various types of scientific modeling. This paper focuses on the seminal work by Nordhaus on the economy-climate link and extends that model to include optimal policies for mitigation, adaptation, and infrastructure investment studying the dynamics of the transition to a low fossil-fuel economy.
Working Paper | This paper assesses the effects of dominant currency shocks (strong US dollar) on emerging markets by studying exchange market pressure (EMP) or foreign exchange (FX) liquidity, GDP growth, external debt, and inflation.
Paper | This paper highlights the role of credit performance in shaping economic performance and sheds new light on both the Brazilian boom in the 2000s and the economic contraction since 2015. Its results suggest that an active stance on public credit would have been instrumental in speeding up the economic recovery.
