We investigate the impact of receiving a public pension on total expenditures, food expenditures, and private transfers of the elderly in South Korea. Using a natural experiment that occurred in 1999, we are able to explore the impacts of a large public pension program expansion which newly incorporated people who had been self-employed, unemployed, and out of the labor force. We find that receipt of a public pension did not allow the elderly to increase total expenditures or food expenditures because the expansion of public pensions largely crowded out financial transfers from adult children and/or own siblings.JEL CODES: C3, D1, H2, 13

A 1979 military coup in South Korea mandated that all colleges, public and private, expand their college admission quotas by 30 per cent in 1981 and 50 per cent in 1982. We use birth cohorts that were differentially exposed to this abrupt, exogenous policy change as an instrumental variable to identify the long‐term effects of college on labour market outcomes. We find that the college enrollment increase by the mandate led to higher monthly earnings and higher probabilities of ‘prestigious’ white‐collar employment. We discuss the historical context in which this intervention took place as well as its relevance for developing countries. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.