Welcome to the 8th issue of the NTA Newsletter!

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The 2013 NTA Conference, Barcelona

The 2013 global conference of the National Transfer Account research network took place at the Faculty of Economics, University of Barcelona, on June 3-8, 2013. The meeting included a two-day international conference (3-4 June) and a three-day workshop (5-8 June) that was structured in two parallel tracks for training, and for discussion and working groups.

Conference and meeting participants wish to thank the organizers who made sure that everything ran smoothly and ensured a very successful event. Special thanks to Concepció Patxot, Gretchen Donehower, Jordi Roca, and their helpers: Alba Fernàndez, Nuria Sáez, and Laura Vall•llosera.

Programme Committee Chairs:
Ronald Lee (University of California, Berkeley),
Andrew Mason (East-West Center and University of Hawaii at Manoa),
Concepció Patxot (Universitat de Barcelona)

Scientific Committee:
Guadalupe Souto (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona),
David McCarthy (University College of London),
Risto Vaittinen (Finnish Centre for Pensions),
Robert Gal (TARKI Social Research Institute),
Alexia Fürnkranz-Prskawetz (Vienna University of Technology)

Local Committee:
Concepció Patxot, Jordi Roca, Rosario Scandurra, Guadalupe Souto, Gemma Abío



Some highlights from the welcoming remarks

Ronald Lee highlighted the increasing outside interest in the work of NTA, coming from policymakers, economists, and other academics. For example, the United States National Institute on Ageing initiated a meeting in early May under the auspices of the United States Academy of Sciences to discuss next steps for NTA. One topic of discussion was the identification of the best institutional home for NTA. Should NTA move into national statistical offices and become a part of national accounts? This will probably only happen in a few countries.

Ron also discussed new directions for NTA in terms of research. These include work on gender and time use, which is taking place in Latin America, the United States, and some countries of Europe and Asia. Another new area focuses on creating accounts by socioeconomic status. This work is progressing most rapidly in Latin America. In Ron's view, some of NTA's strongest messages for policymakers will come from these two areas of research.

Another important area of research is wealth accounts, including bequests. Without information in this area, the story on intergenerational accounts is incomplete. Information on wealth accounts should also help solve some of the puzzles that have been encountered, such as the fact that young people often have more asset income than can be explained by their past savings, which is probably due to bequests.

Additional new research directions may emerge from this global meeting as well.

Plenary Sessions

(Click on the title to see presentation slides.)

David de la Croix (Professor of Economics, IRES and CORE, UCLouvain):
Policy implications of endogenous fertility

Ronald Lee and Andrew Mason:
Reformulating the Support Ratio to Reflect Asset Income and Transfers

Maurizio Bussolo:
Capital for the Future: Saving and Investment in an Interdependent World

Launch of the United Nations NTA Manual

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs - Population Division is releasing the National Transfer Accounts Manual: Measuring and Analysing the Generational Economy. The new manual was launched on June 4th as part of the 9th NTA Global Conference. Andrew Mason and Gretchen Donehower were instrumental in the completion of the new manual, working as consultants to draft and revise the material. Jorge Bravo (Chief, Population and Development Section, DESA-Population Division, United Nations) led the coordination and implementation of the project that provided core funding for the preparation and publication of the manual.

The launch was chaired by Jorge Bravo, with speakers Ronald Lee and Andrew Mason, and discussants Tim Miller, and Concepción Patxot.

The manual is currently available on the private part of the NTA website, or from the UN Population Division website. Click here (NTA website) or here (UN website) to download a copy.

Launch of the manual's final version

Following the successful launch of the preliminary version of the NTA manual at the Barcelona NTA meeting, the final version of the manual will be presented at the IUSSP Conference in Busan, Korea, on 27 August, 2013, from 7pm to 8pm before the largest audience of population specialists.

New book by NTA researchers: Demographic Change in Argentina

The 9th NTA Conference in Barcelona hosted the presentation of the preliminary results of a study on demographic change that the World Bank is currently conducting in Argentina. The book, to be published this year, represents an interesting application of the NTA methodology to public finance analysis. Using NTA estimates to explore dynamic changes in the labor market, social sectors – education, health, social protection – and macroeconomic conditions, the study describes the potential fiscal implications of population aging in Argentina.

According to the preliminary results, Argentina will face an unsustainable explosion in pensions expenditure and an increase in health spending. To compensate this increase in fiscal costs, the country will have to rethink incentives to participate in the labor market, measures to increase productivity, reforms in social sectors and pro-savings policies. The presentation highlighted how crucial it is for public policy to take into account demographic issues, and the potential support offered by the NTA methodology to this discussion.

Click here for the presentation slides.

New tools available on the NTA website

Stata code for triangle graphs

Morne Oosthuizen has developed a Stata code for creating triangle graphs (ternary plots), and is providing his files for the NTA community. This link will lead you to the program file and help file on the website. Thank you Morne for sharing your work!

Age profile checks

There are certain criteria to which NTA age profiles have to conform to be consistent both across countries, and internally. For example, net flows have to equal inflows minus outflows, components have to add up to the main flow, and the lifecycle deficit has to equal consumption minus labor income, among others. There is now a file available to make it easier to check if your age profiles fit all the criteria. At any point during the construction of age profiles you can use this file to check if your profiles are internally consistent (even if you only have a couple of your profiles constructed). Click here to download the checks file.

Uploading tutorial

Country teams should keep their data up-to-date in the online database. A presentation-style tutorial is now available on issues related to uploading data. The tutorial addresses common errors that cause uploading problems (such as not filling in all required fields, leaving blank rows or cells, using excel references, and others). Perhaps more importantly, it provides detailed instructions about how to update or delete existing data, and how to fix common errors in the uploaded files such as blank fields, mis-specified variable types, or blank age profiles. It also has a section about what's new in the database, and common reasons why consistency checks fail. These are worth repeating in the newsletter - scroll down to the end to see these. Click here for the full tutorial.

Best Paper Prizes at NTA Global Conference, presented by Elsevier

Two prizes are being offered by Elsevier as part of launch of the Journal of the Economics of Ageing. Winning paper(s) will be published in the Journal of the Economics of Ageing subject to peer review.

Welcome to new NTA members

A team from Benin has recently joined the NTA project, and a team from Ghana is in the process of joining. There is also a new team from France, Jamaica, and Peru.

Benin
Barthelemy Biao
Detondji Camille Guidime
Assogba Hodonou
Idossou Jean-Baptiste Oga
Bachir Olatoundji Souberou

France
Hippolyte d'Albis
Carole Bonnet
Elena Stancanelli
Francois-Charles Wolff

Jamaica
Deidra Coy

Peru
Carlos Aramburu
Janina Virginia Leon Castillo
Javier Olivera

What's new in the NTA online database?

Outflows are shown as positive in the country tables. This means that net flows are now inflows minus outflows.

Remember to keep these unsmooth: CFE, CGE, TFWE, TFWEI, TGE, TGEI.
For these variables you may wish to upload only unsmooth means, while for others upload only smooth means. Any variable that has a mix of smoothed and unsmoothed components should be classified as “smooth mean”.

TGS (social protection, other) has been merged into TGXC (public transfers, other cash)

TFC (intrahousehold transfers, consumption) is a new variable, that is a sum of education, health, and other. It was created to provide uniformity in the way the country tables are constructed.

TFWX (intrahh transfers, consumption other than health and educ) includes TFWA (housing).

CFX = CF – CFE – CFH is now called Private Consumption, Other than health and education.
Components CFD (Private Consumption, Durables) and CFR (Private Consumption, Owned Housing) that were previously offspring of CF are now included in CFX. CFR and CFD are no longer included in the database.  Country teams will still need to calculate consumption of owner-ccupied housing as part of the intra-household transfer calculations, but the consumption variable is not reported separately.  Asset income from owner-occupied housing is included in the database.

CGX = CG – CGE – CGH changed name from Public Consumption, Other to Public Consumption, Other than health and education.

Common reasons age profile consistency checks fail

Checks fail because...Components don’t add up to parent variable(s).
Often this is because a variable was updated in the database, while parent variables were not. For example if you update TGHI, don’t forget to update TGH, TGI, TG, T, and R.

Checks fail because...Sums include all smooth means, while corresponding unsmooth means for some variables have been calculated.
For example if you have (unsmoothed) mean CGE, do not include its smooth mean in CG, C, and LCD. In fact there is no reason to ever smooth means for CFE, CGE, TFWE, TFWEI, TGE, or TGEI.

If you only have inflows (or outflows) calculated, do not make net flows equal to these assuming that the other flows are zero (unless that is true – then you should upload these as zeroes).

Checks fail because...Old components are left in the database.
If the variable characteristics are not the same, the variable does not get replaced. You need to replace it as “hidden”.