NB18-08: The Changing Nature of Work and Public Pension Coverage: Evidence from the US and Europe

The proposed project will provide an international perspective on the changing nature of work and the implications of this trend for the coverage of workers by public pension plans. The project will focus primarily on the US, the UK, and Germany, but may compile some information for a broader set of countries that includes Canada, Japan, and eight other European countries.
The specific goals of the project include:
• To identify useful measures of the nature of work for which comparable data can be collected across countries and over time
• To document trends over time in these measures, primarily in the US, UK, and Germany
• To compile data on the requirements for public pension eligibility over time in these three countries
• To combine data on work and eligibility requirements to draw preliminary inferences about how the changing nature of work may affect eligibility for public pension benefits
• To lay the foundation for possible future work that expands the analysis to a broader set of countries and seeks to draw stronger inferences about the impact of this trend