ARC research Project on Pension Reform

See also: https://saspensions.wordpress.com/ 

The provision of replacement incomes (pensions) for old people is among one of the main achievements of modern advanced economies. Historically, the State and other entities successfully organized the provision of public pensions. There is no doubt that this contributed to the wellbeing of elderly citizens. It is also likely to have played a significant role in the reduction of old-age poverty. However, public pension budgets are now increasingly challenged by demographic and economic developments, namely rapid population ageing and increasing longevity combined with slow(er) economic growth. Hence, policymakers around the world are confronted with the challenging task of reforming existing pension systems.

This interdisciplinary research project aims at critically assessing the key conditions that a public pension system should fulfill to be successfully reformed.

The hypothesis is that there are three such conditions:

1. financial sustainability
2. social adequacy
3. safe governance.

Hence, the ‘SAS’ acronym.

The research will try to identify the pension architecture that is the most likely to generate SAS pensions.

That research will rest on diverse approaches (conceptual, numerical, empirical and normative) to assess the properties of various possible pension architectures, through the prism of SAS criteria.