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Demographic and Social Challenges in the Design of Public Pension Schemes

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Economic Challenges of Pension Systems

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Abstract

Demographic changes and social transformations affect the design of public pension systems. Population ageing and factors such as the progressive reduction in fertility rates and the increase in longevity have a direct impact on the sustainability of public pensions, especially in defined-benefit schemes. The study of longer life expectancy requires an analysis of its effects on specific issues such as pension adequacy (both contributory and non-contributory pensions), pensioners receiving several public benefits simultaneously (for instance, retirement and widow/widower’s pensions) and the availability of sufficient financial resources to meet health and long-term care costs during retirement. This chapter presents an applied view of the evolution of the main demographic indicators and their effect on pension systems, based on previous studies carried out by the authors.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Note the gender gap at advanced ages is not as great as it is at birth.

  2. 2.

    The data used from the EU-SILC are self-perceived activity limitations data.

  3. 3.

    All these new classes of partnership represent a significant challenge for conducting statistical analyses in this field (OECD 2016).

  4. 4.

    These first three types of family include couples without children, couples with at least one resident child under 25 years of age and couples with a youngest resident child aged 25 or older.

  5. 5.

    Joined the EU in 2013 – data only available from 2010.

  6. 6.

    European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC).

  7. 7.

    Our description of the distribution of the population by marital status showed that among elderly women, widows, singles and divorcees accounted for 57.10%, while married women represented just 42.64% of the total.

  8. 8.

    Probabilities are estimated in line with the methodology described in Alaminos and Ayuso (2015, 2019).

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Acknowledgments

The study was supported by ICREA Academia, the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the ERDF under grants ECO2015-66314-R and ECO2016-76203-C2-2-P.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Econometrics, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Estefanía Alaminos, Mercedes Ayuso & Montserrat Guillen

Authors
  1. Estefanía Alaminos
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  2. Mercedes Ayuso
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  3. Montserrat Guillen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mercedes Ayuso .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Organization, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain

    Marta Peris-Ortiz

  2. Department of Financial Economics and Accounting, University of Extremadura, Cáceres, Spain

    José Álvarez-García

  3. Financial Economics and Accounting, University of Extremadura, Cáceres, Spain

    Inmaculada Domínguez-Fabián

  4. Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Science (ISBA), Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Pierre Devolder

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Alaminos, E., Ayuso, M., Guillen, M. (2020). Demographic and Social Challenges in the Design of Public Pension Schemes. In: Peris-Ortiz, M., Álvarez-García, J., Domínguez-Fabián, I., Devolder, P. (eds) Economic Challenges of Pension Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37912-4_2

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