Search

The traffic demand and prediction for the next decade would be mostly affiliated with the Internet of Things (IoT). Various challenges with mobile communication industry will be faced as the demand in high capacity, multi mobile devices (users) connected to the network, uplink power consumption on User Equipment (UE), and its effect on the life span of mobile phone. The major features of 5G as per user experience on the network are Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC), Internet of Things (IoT), sustaining high rate Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), and connection density Massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC). This research work focuses on Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G New Radio (NR) early deployment on eMBB for achieving the required throughput. The 5G performance requirement is higher than 4G, which includes the capacity to support user experience downlink throughput with target value of 1 Gbps, millisecond-level of end-to-end latency, and high connection density of 1 million per square kilometer. Optimization is a vast topic, and this paper discusses the problems faced by users latching on 5G NSA network on the downlink and 4G Network on the uplink and suggests its solution.

The US Social Security pension system is not adequately financed to fully meet benefit obligations specified in current law beyond the early 2030s. This potential financing shortfall has been recognized for at least the past quarter century, but policymakers have done nothing to address it. The system is largely financed on a pay-as-you-go basis, so restoring financing balance requires that the taxes supporting the system be increased, the benefits provided under current law be reduced, or some combination of the two. The delay in addressing the system’s financing imbalances has resulted in shifting of costs associated with the pensions from older to younger generations. The analysis here explains how this works and provides estimates of the cost shifting that has occurred due to the delays in financing reform. It assesses how recent proposals to address Social Security financing shortfalls shift costs to future generations and depart fundamentally from basic principles on which the system was originally based. TOPICS:Retirement, social security, pension funds, wealth management Key Findings • Policy makers have known for more than a quarter century that Social Security is under financed and the delay in rebalancing its financing will dramatically increase costs for those now entering the workforce, those now entering kindergarten, and those not yet born. • From 1990 to 2012, median real incomes of the elderly grew 29 percent, while that of families of full-time, full year working families grew 2.3 percent raising questions about the equity of increasing taxes on workers to finance across-the-board Social Security benefit increases. • Public sentiment toward maintaining or expanding Social Security benefits at the cost of higher future taxes ignores the implications for and potential sentiments of the young and unborn people who will be paying the higher taxes.

In this paper, we explore the underlying explanations for the under financing of the U.S. Social Security pension system that has persisted since the late 1980s despite repeated calls for reform by the program’s trustees and various advisory groups. Both micro and macro estimates of the cost shifting from older to younger generations because of the delay in financing reform are provided. The analysis shows that recent proposals that call for balancing financing reform adjustments between benefits and revenues would result in most of the cost being shifted to future generations of participants. Because reforms have been delayed and many current proposals call for greater welfare transfers in the program from high to low career earners, the case is made that the costs of reform should be imposed on the basis of participants’ ability to pay rather than on the basis of the year in which they were born.

The increasing rate of risky behaviours among the East African adolescents has greater burden to the adolescent, family and the society. Young women in this region are exposed to potential sexual and reproductive health problems including sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, contraception, sexual abuse and rape, female genital mutilation, and maternal or child mortality. This is attributed by failure of communication of most parents in this region with their adolescents on issues of sexuality and reproductive health like condom use, puberty, STIs and physical development. On the base of academic literature and other materials, this paper argues that parents’- adolescents’ communication on sexual and reproductive health issues in this region is circumscribed by various factors including gender differences, level of education among parents, occupations, traditional norms and religion. The paper concludes that, parents and other adults’ discussion with adolescents on reproductive health issues is imperative in reducing risky behaviors among adolescents. For effective communication on reproductive health issues, parents and adults need to be educated on their roles as primary source of information to their children. Furthermore, there is a need to address gender differences and socio-cultural norms that hinder effective communication. Key words: Parent, adolescent, sexuality, reproductive health, communication, barriers, East Africa.

The research work investigates the dielectric properties (dielectric constant, dielectric loss and conductivity) of both diabetic and non-diabetic patients’ blood in order to enhance of low level laser therapy (LLLT). Knowing the dielectric properties of blood, profile dose threshold exposure duration can improve LLLT for diabetic mellitus disease. This was achieved, using impedance analyser 4294A, frequency range 40 kHz - 30 MHz. Measurements were taken before and after blood irradiated with a portable diode-pumped solid state laser of wavelength 532 nm at power of 60 mW in standard cuvettes. Control diabetic patient’s bloods were high in dielectric parameter compared with the control non-diabetic patient’s blood. After exposure for 5 and 10 minute’s duration, the value of dielectric loss for the blood exposed for 5 minutes duration appreciated significantly. This is attributed to the energy acquired by haemoglobin and oxygen activation that increased cell membrane resistance, protecting the K+ions efflux and thus prevent perilous balance of Ca+2 ions. Laser power of 60 mW for 5 minutes exposure proved effective in LLL diabetic mellitus therapy.

The evolution of Mobile communication over time have grown from second generation and still growing. Since LTE is a packet based all IP network, which cannot support terrestrial circuit switch call, therefore, Circuit switch fall back is needed to redirect this service to existing UMTS/GSM network. Customers' requirements for radio resources increases with the use of devices and smart phones, however, to satisfy this demand access to packet data services and voice are needed at all time. This work intends to analyze how user/subscriber latched on preferred technology, communicate while mobility takes places without facing drop calls both PS and CS between LTE and 3G network. Network Operators goal is to ensure optimal, seamless coverage for its users while roaming from one cluster/location area to another cluster without distortion. The demand for radio resources increases, hence optimizations (soft or physical adjustment) are carried out at interval to improve network quality and coverage.

The widely reported waning of the American Dream has been blamed on a litany of economic and cultural currents, but the cost of the U.S. health care system rarely makes the list. The U.S. spends at least 7 percent more of its GDP on health care than other rich countries, on average, leaving us with less to spend on infrastructure and defense, houses and education, and other worthwhile governmental and personal pursuits. And we have little to show for it, as the U.S. lags most other rich countries on many key health measures, including longevity. This analysis shows how since the 1980s, the cost growth of employer-provided health benefits has been shrinking workers’ wage growth, eroding their retirement benefits and becoming an increasingly important factor in growing income inequality. While the losses have been most painful for those across the bottom 60 percent of the earnings distribution, higher earners have not escaped the damage, especially when factoring in the total cost of employer-provided health insurance. The latter part of the analysis explores how the organization and delivery of health services in the U.S. sustain our abnormally high health costs, often without improving our health, and suggests several practical solutions that can both bring costs down and encourage evidence-based best practices. Failure to stanch the rising flow of compensation dollars into health benefits will close the door on the American Dream for an ever-increasing share of U.S. workers.

Several recent assessments suggest that the majority of U.S. workers are at risk of suffering a fall in their standard of living in retirement. These assessments are often based on models that fail to reflect the way income and saving vary over workers’ life cycles. They extrapolate younger workers’ observed savings behavior into the future, ignoring workers’ capacity to boost saving after children leave home, the mortgage is paid off, and other early-life obligations have been discharged. The measurement of preretirement income and its spendable portion as an indicator of living standards in working years is often exaggerated by inappropriate indexing. This method leads to overestimates of earnings to be replaced in retirement and underestimates of the income replacement capacity of Social Security for various segments of the workforce. Although clearly some workers are not saving enough to maintain their standard of living throughout retirement, the situation is less dire than a number of studies have suggested. This general conclusion holds true even with a sensible consideration of healthcare costs.

Wind turbines blades of propeller type are made according to various blade profiles such as NACA, LS, and LM. There are many factors for selecting a profile. One significant factor is the chord length, which depend on various values throughout the blade. In this work a NACA 4412 profile was created using DESIGN FOIL software to obtain the coordinates of a wind turbine blade in PRO/E. Aerodynamic analysis was done on the created design. Maximum lift to drag ratio was calculated by varying angle of attack of the blade. To find a suitable composite for wind turbine blade, Modal and Static analysis were performed on the modified design using Carbon fiber, E-Glass, S-Glass and Kevlar fiber composites in ANSYS APDL 12.0 software.

Virtually all state and local government employers in the United States offer workers some sort of retirement benefits today but there is significant variation in the characteristics of those plans. There is also a great deal of public angst about the level and timing of commitments made in these plans. The literature on retirement plans suggests that they are important elements of compensation that plan sponsors use in meeting their human resource goals. But public retirement plans are created and operated in a public policy environment and forces other than local labor market considerations may be brought to bear in the organization and operation of these plans. This paper explores some of the possible explanations for the variation in state retirement plans. Public disclosure data is used to develop a model that explains relative generosity of benefits based on the characteristics of participants and the marketplaces in which the plans are offered. The final section of the paper places the issues explored in a forward looking context. The public disclosure environment recently put in place for public retirement plans is likely to have a more profound effect on state pension operations than any other development in recent history.

Financial advisors commonly use earnings replacement rates to assist workers in their retirement planning. Policymakers and analysts use them to gauge the adequacy of Social Security benefits and other retirement income in allowing retirees to maintain preretirement living standards. In recent years, the Social Security trustees have regularly published replacement rates that have been widely interpreted as the extent to which Social Security benefits replace earnings of workers at various points in the lifetime earnings distribution. However, the trustees’ replacement rates are calculated differently than those generally used for retirement planning purposes, possibly leading to confusion among policymakers and others regarding how much of workers’ earnings are replaced by Social Security and how much those workers need to save on their own for retirement. Financial planners calculate replacement rates by comparing an individual’s retirement income to that same individual’s preretirement earnings, generally earnings in the years immediately preceding retirement. The Social Security Administration, by contrast, effectively calculates replacement rates by comparing retiree incomes to the incomes of contemporaneous workers. This latter measure is often used in other countries but differs both qualitatively and quantitatively from the more common replacement-rate calculations used for financial planning purposes. We find that replacement rates calculated on a financial planning basis are generally higher than those published by the Social Security trustees and that Social Security benefits generally replace somewhat more of individual workers’ earnings than the trustees’ rates suggest.

Over the past 15 to 20 years, many companies have converted their traditional defined benefit plans to cash balance or pension equity plans. In a cash balance plan, the worker's ‘account’ is based on an annual contribution rate for each year of employment, plus accumulating interest on annual contributions. A pension equity plan defines the benefit as a percentage of final average earnings for each year of service under the plan. Both types of plans specify the benefit as a lump sum payable at termination. In contrast, traditional defined benefit plans specify benefits in terms of an annuity payable at retirement. From the employees' perspective, cash balance and pension equity plans look somewhat like defined contribution plans. However, they are funded, administered, and regulated as defined benefit plans.

During the period from the middle of 2000 through to the end of 2002, the declining value in financial assets and falling interest rates raised questions about the funding status of employer-sponsored pensions in the USA. A number of large plan sponsors declared bankruptcy and turned over significantly underfunded plans to the government's pension insurance agency. Because the insurance of benefits is limited, many retirees whose benefits were transferred to the insurance agency saw their pension annuities reduced. Most plan sponsors with ongoing plans saw their pension programmes dip from being ‘fully funded’ under government rules to being underfunded. The director of the pension insurance programme has raised concerns about the viability of the insurance system because of recently absorbed plans and the prospect of additional underfunded plans being dumped onto the government system. This combination of events has led many to conclude there is a private pension funding crisis. The analysis presented here looks at the underlying funding status of private pensions in the USA and the root causes of alarm. It concludes that most plans are not in jeopardy but that there are some chronically underfunded plans threatened by recent events. It suggests that the public regulation of these particular plans might deserve further review to ensure that the current problem is rectified in coming years to restore faith in the existing system.

Virtually everyone familiar with U.S. Social Security financing understands that the system cannot pay currently legislated benefits for more than another three or four decades without significant, probably politically unacceptable, tax increases. Some analysts predict that the cash crunch will come substantially sooner than that. Various ways to measure the financial inadequacy of the system are outlined in recent annual reports of the Social Security Trustees. However, all reasonable measures of the system’s finances lead to the same fundamental conclusion that the system’s benefits and revenue sources must be significantly rebalanced. The only issue is when the necessary policy changes should be imposed. Even if one takes the most favorable perspective on the long-term funding situation of Social Security, it is important to consider the lead time necessary to minimize the disruptive effects that rebalancing the system could have on future beneficiaries or taxpayers. The most recent intermediate or “best guess” estimate of the Trustees is that the combined OASDI trust funds will be completely exhausted in 2042 under current law, although their most conservative estimate suggests that the trust funds could be depleted by 2031. When the trust funds are exhausted, dramatic adjustments to benefit payments or trust-fund revenues will be required. If we assume that the system continues to operate under current law until the trust funds are depleted, the latest projections are that at the time of exhaustion benefits would have to be cut by more than one-third for all beneficiaries then retired and all future beneficiaries in order to bring the system back into balance (U.S. Board of Trustees, 2003). Alternatively, dramatic payroll tax increases would have to be imposed on workers. To wait to make adjustments until this problem is upon us would be grossly unfair to the beneficiaries and/or workers at that time. In response to this situation, one of the proposed reform options put forward by the president’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security (2001) featured a modification in the way retirement benefits would be calculated in the future. Given the Social Security Trustees’ current intermediate assumption that average wages will grow 1.1 percent per year faster than the overall price level, current law implies that the Social Security benefits of people retiring 40 years from now will be roughly 55-percent higher in terms of purchasing power than the benefits of today’s retirees. One of the options put forward by the President’s Commission was to eliminate this growth in real benefits by shifting from determining initial benefits by wageindexing prior earnings to price-indexing them after 2009. Under this policy real benefit levels would be maintained but not increased. This change in indexing alone would completely eliminate the funding deficit now faced by the system over the 75-year projection period employed by its actuaries (Commission to Strengthen Social Security, 2001). In fact, the system would be running a substantial surplus at the end of the 75-year window. The net effect of substituting price indexing for wage indexing would be to gradually reduce Social Security benefits relative to a worker’s lifetime wages. The average replacement rate of Social Security would gradually fall from its current level of 43 percent. Just to be clear, real benefits would not be reduced from their current level under this President’s Commission alternative, but they would be reduced relative to wages and relative to what is currently promised future retirees by the law. Future real benefit increases, which are embedded in current legislation if wages rise faster than prices, would be eliminated. An across-the-board reduction in legislated or promised benefits of this sort would have * Pozen: Harvard Law School, Griswold 304, Cambridge, MA 02138; Schieber: Watson Wyatt Worldwide, 1717 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20006; Shoven: Department of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.

Several recent assessments suggest that the majority of U.S. workers are at risk of having inadequate resources to maintain their work-life standards of living in retirement. These assessments are often based on models that fail to reflect patterns of income, consumption and savings that vary over workers’ life cycles. They extrapolate younger workers’ observed savings behavior into the future ignoring workers’ capacity to catch up after children leave home, the mortgage is paid off, and other early-life obligations have been discharged. The measurement of preretirement income and its spendable portion as an indicator of living standard in working years is often exaggerated owing to inappropriate indexing. This leads to overestimates of earnings to be replaced in retirement, underestimates of the income replacement capacity of Social Security for various segments of the workforce, and misperceptions about workers’ own responsibility for securing their retirement prospects. Although clearly some workers are not saving sufficiently to maintain their standards of living throughout retirement, the situation is less dire than a number of studies have suggested. This general conclusion still holds with a sensible consideration of health care costs.

In summer 2009, health care reform seems almost within reach. President Barack Obama is urging the Congress to pass bills, and both the House and Senate are trying to deliver. Everyone agrees on the necessity of reform, but that’s where the agreement ends. Most of the ongoing discussions about who should pay for health care legislation have proposed employer coverage mandates, limitations on health benefit tax preferences, taxation of health insurers and 'play-or-pay' provisions, all of which would distribute the costs of expanded coverage among employers and, through them, to their workers in the form of slower wage growth. An important - but often overlooked - point in these discussions is that health costs paid by employers are part of the compensation paid to workers. Compensation includes wages, employer contributions to Social Security and Medicare, the cost of any health insurance coverage for workers and their dependents, and contributions to any pension plans, 401(k) plans and other capital accumulation programs. While many of the proposals for health reform are looking to employers to fund much of the cost, there has been little focus on the links among wages, compensation and the cost of employer-sponsored health and retirement benefits. No one has talked much about how higher health benefit costs to employers would affect the paychecks workers bring home. The analysis in this report projects five scenarios that illustrate the importance of controlling health costs. In our baseline scenario, we manage to cut health benefit cost inflation rates roughly in half and do not expand health insurance coverage. In that scenario, wage growth rates are projected to be roughly equivalent to those of the 1990s for the next couple of decades. Under an assumption that we control health cost inflation but expand coverage by means of an employer play-or-pay mandate, the effect on wage growth patterns would be negative at the bottom of the earnings distribution and mildly negative in the middle of the earnings distribution for a while. But after 2015, wage growth rates would return to the healthier levels of the 1990s. Bringing health costs under control allows more resources for expanded coverage. If we expanded health insurance coverage but our current health cost inflation rate continued unabated, the higher overall costs would result in falling wages at the bottom of the earnings spectrum and very slow wage growth on up the earnings distribution. These dismal wage outcomes would persist over at least the next couple of decades, possibly longer. The next scenario considers the real possibility that health inflation increases as a result of expanded insurance coverage offered under reform. Looking back at the implementation of Medicare, this is exactly what happened. This scenario combines expanded health care coverage with accelerated health inflation rates. In this case, the higher costs would drive disposable wages downward across most of the earnings spectrum, although the declines would be steepest for lower-earning workers. These depressed conditions would persist over the entire projection period. Fixing what is broken in our health care system is about more than expanding health insurance coverage or deciding whether taxing employer-sponsored health benefits is good or bad policy. No matter how health care reform is financed - whether by employers, who pass the costs on to workers, or taxpayers - the bill will be unaffordable unless costs are brought under control. Our current health care system is embedded with incentives that encourage providers to dispense an ever-expanding menu of treatments and medications, even where there is little evidence of their efficacy. Our health care system already costs 40 percent to 100 percent more than its counterparts in other developed countries and is growing twice as fast.

Globalization of the automotive industry continues to accelerate as offshore manufacturers and suppliers open production facilities in North America, and North American companies invest overseas and throughout the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) region. But perhaps the most compelling reason to globalize is to reduce costs that would otherwise trickle down to consumers (as higher prices) and shareholders (as reduced profits). Pressure to rein in costs has become fierce in the last few years, spurred by the ever-increasing market share of leaner Japanese companies. With labor-related costs among the highest that companies incur in normal business operations, outsourcing labor has become a popular financial fix as automakers call on both contract labor and their suppliers to take on more of the production involved in bringing a vehicle to market. And as overseas workers in both blue- and white-collar positions become better educated and more skilled technically, the popularity of offshoring is increasing.

Employer provision of health insurance for retirees arose somewhat accidentally several decades ago when many employers did not understand the nature of the commitment they were making. Over the decades, all employer-sponsored health benefits have been subject to high rates of cost inflation. That phenomenon in combination with the common practice of providing retiree health benefits on a pay-as-you-go basis has now put these benefits in jeopardy as many employers are curtailing or eliminating retiree health insurance coverage. This analysis looks at the underlying dynamics of providing these benefits and how employers are changing their plans. It assesses the extent to which colleges and universities offer these benefits to retiring faculty members and the prospects of continuing provision of the benefits in the future. It concludes that the current provision of these benefits, as now offered and financed, is economically irrational in many cases. It suggests that the new Medicare legislation that will provide pharmaceutical for retirees starting in 2006 may be a better alternative for providing retiree health insurance for many employers.

Chapters 4 and 5 explored the relative operations of funded versus pay-go retirement programs under a range of alternative demographic and economic scenarios. The economic and demographic conditions leading up to the 1960s and 1970s allowed public policymakers to rationalize the operation of national retirement systems on a pay-go basis. By the early 1990s, however, financial market operations and changing demographic outlooks significantly altered the terrain of pension financing. In its 1994 study that set off much of the world discussion about pensions, the World Bank advocated basing national retirement structures on three “pillars” of income security. The first pillar should be a pay-go, publicly managed defined benefit system. The second pillar should be a funded defined contribution system, in which the assets are privately managed. The third pillar should be private savings. By the end of the 1990s, the model envisaged by the World Bank was up and running in several countries. Case Studies of Nations Shifting to Funded Pensions The approach that probably has received the most attention and has been emulated most widely is that of Chile. Chile's May 1981 reform of its pay-go retirement plans was truly radical. The Chileans basically transformed their system into private individual retirement accounts, which are mandatory, fully funded, fully vested, and portable. Workers must contribute 10 percent of earnings to their retirement accounts.

Throughout much of this discussion, we have emphasized the need to consider the implications of population aging within the broader context of the macroeconomic burden that aging dependency will pose across all segments of societies. Discussions of population aging often devolve into debates over how to reduce pension costs or the more general costs of government operations. An alternative approach is to explore policies and institutional changes that would promote economic growth. Economic growth both supports rising standards of living and fills the public coffers that finance public pension programs. In this section, we look at several scenarios in which countries can pursue enhanced economic growth. Namely, we estimate how the growth in standards of living would change if policies were adopted to: 1) increase workforce activity rates and 2) enhance labor efficiency. In addition, we sort through how increasing economic growth can raise standards of living for both the elderly and non-elderly segments of the population. No one disputes the prediction that population aging will increase the future costs of public pension and health care programs. In recent decades, rising age-related spending has been exacerbated by the trends toward earlier retirement and longer life expectancy. The combination of these two trends has reduced tax contributions and increased retirement expenditures because more pensioners are collecting their retirement benefits for longer periods of time.

The prevailing wisdom in media accounts is that job stability has vanished, especially for those in large corporations. Academic studies of job stability have found little difference between the 1990s and earlier decades, but these studies have not been able to focus on large firms. This paper provides the first detailed analysis of job stability in large corporations in the 1990s using a sample of 51 firms that are clients of Watson Wyatt Worldwide. We find that mean tenure and the percentage of employees with 10 or more years of service have actually increased in our sample. Even in large firms with shrinking employment, the odds that a worker would be with the same employer five years later were higher than the same odds for the labor market as a whole. There is no evidence that mid-career employees have been singled out in downsizing decisions; their turnover rate is the same in both growing and downsizing firms. Regression analysis shows that the impact of downsizing is still being borne by the most junior workers and that there is no evidence that rising wage differentials by experience are encouraging firms to substitute junior for senior workers.

This paper examines the impact of the aging demographic structure of the U.S. on its funded private pension system. A 75-year outlook is produced for the pension system corresponding to the 75-year forecast of the Social Security system. The primary result is that the pension system will cease being a source of national saving in the third decade of the next century. The paper speculates about the impact this may have on asset prices. (EXCERPT)