Differences in minimum income protection for the elderly and their effects on poverty in the United States and Europe

Abstract: We propose to provide evidence on how different systems of income protection in old age are associated with poverty among the elderly across OECD countries. In a first step, we will detail institutional settings and policy changes during the last decade, comparing the United States with selected European countries. In a second step, we will use micro-data from the cross-country panel Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to estimate the relationship between minimum income schemes and the elderly's financial situation. These analyzes will allow us to examine in detail how different benefit schemes contributed to changing poverty rates for different categories of older persons, with a special attention to differences across gender and working careers (i.e., degree of labor market attachment).