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Civil Service Pension Scheme

Autor: Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico (OCDE)
Año: 1997
Resumen: This publication is a tool for designers of new civil service pension schemes in central and eastern Europe. It presents civil service pension schemes in five OECD Member countries and ten central and eastern European countries. In most central and eastern European countries, people employed in the public administration are covered under common national pension schemes, usually defined in a common pension law. As part of efforts to improve the professionalisation and quality of public administration, countries are defining civil service categories of personnel through civil service legislation. Some countries will introduce specific pension provisions for the public administration employees subject to this legislation. There are at least three obvious reasons for this: to secure the independence of civil servants, to make a public sector career more attractive, and to shift the costs of current remuneration into the future. In most OECD Member countries, civil servants have separate and specially designed pension schemes. These are either totally independent of the common national pension schemes or complementary to them. Conditions vary between countries and so do principles for financing. In one country there might also be several schemes for various categories of state officials and employees. “Pay-as-you-go” schemes financed by the annual state budget exist in several OECD Member countries. When they were introduced, national civil services were small and common pension schemes for the working population at large were lacking. Over the last 30 years, the rapid growth of western public services has not had any major impact on pension costs in pay-as-you-go schemes for demographic reasons and, until recently, the financing of pensions has in many countries stayed unchanged. The long-term nature of pension schemes and the strong interest that civil servants and their unions have in keeping them intact has added to the difficulty of changing them. With changing demography, pensions are becoming a heavy burden on the budget. Pensions imply both considerable running costs and heavy long-term liabilities. That is why many OECD Member countries today are trying to find new solutions to fund the financing costs. Different funding and actuarial techniques can be used to achieve this.

Fuente: Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico (OCDE)
Clasificación: Seguridad Social y Sistemas de Pensiones
Tipo de Publicación: Documentos de Trabajo
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Private Pensions in OECD Countries The United Kingdom

Autor: E. Philip Davis
Año: 1997
Resumen: This volume is part of a series of monographs on private pensions in OECD countries. Previous titles have considered the situation in Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. The United Kingdom pension system has some distinctive characteristics. Publicly-provided pensions have become less important as a source of retirement income. The ageing of the population will shrink the numbers of those working relative to those receiving old-age pensions, but because of the low rates of public pension payments, contribution rates will not need to rise dramatically to cover pension costs. Funded company-based schemes are extensive, with one of the highest asset to GDP ratios among the OECD countries. Personal private pensions are growing rapidly in coverage. Evidence suggests that these pension funds have boosted saving and increased the supply of long-term funds, so stimulating the development of capital markets. The size and scope of private pensions in the United Kingdom makes the policy debate particularly relevant to policymakers in other countries who are considering expanding the role of the private sector. Three factors have been particularly important in promoting the use of private pensions. First, the public pension system is residual. The incentive to make alternative arrangements for retirement pensions is strong. However, the low level of the public pension leaves a sizeable proportion of pensioners dependent on means-tested benefits to maintain acceptable living standards. Company-provided occupational pensions cover much of the workforce. The official encouragement of personal pension plans is both a means of extending coverage to those working in smaller, nonunionised companies (where occupational pension schemes are less common) and to provide competition to the occupational schemes, perhaps improving their performance. Second, the case for preferential fiscal treatment of pension funds has been found persuasive in the United Kingdom. However, the generous income tax regime for pensioners relative to those of working age does not seem to be well-justified. Regressive distributional consequences of tax privileges are a cause of concern. Furthermore, the cost of incentives for personal pensions appear to have been excessive in relation to the resultant savings in social security. Third, the regulatory regime for occupational pensions has provided an appropriate balance between costs for the employer and protection of the beneficiary. For example, temporary shortfalls in funds are not penalised and accounting rules focus on income rather than market values, so avoiding unintended bias against equity holdings. There are limits on the extent to which funds can invest in the employer's companies, and on the ability of predators to extract pension fund surpluses. Nevertheless, the previous regulatory regime was criticised as being unwieldy. The new (1997) regime will improve matters significantly.

Fuente: Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico (OCDE)
Clasificación: Seguridad Social y Sistemas de Pensiones
Tipo de Publicación: Documentos de Trabajo
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From Generosity to Sustainability: The Austrian Pension System and Options for its Reform

Autor: Thimann, Christian; Koch, Manfred
Año: 1997
Resumen: Austria has probably the world’s highest pension expenditures relative to its economic size, largely because of the generosity of its pension system. This paper examines the institutional setup of the Austrian pension system and projects its future development based on current policies. The projection results show a swift financial worsening. With the already high level of contribution rates, pension expenditures, and budget transfers, the results underscore the need for reform. Much of this reform can, however, be achieved by maintaining the structure of the system and adjusting some of its key parameters. The paper outlines options for such a reform.

Fuente: Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI)
Clasificación: Reformas de Pensiones
Tipo de Publicación: Documentos de Trabajo
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Aging in the Asian "Tigers": Challenges for Fiscal Policy

Autor: Heller, Peter S.
Año: 1997
Resumen: The paper assesses the timing and magnitude of the government expenditure effects arising from the changing demographics and evolving medical demands of the Asian "Tiger" economies. With some exceptions, and unlike the industrial countries, the limited social insurance commitments in most of these countries initially suggests that aging populations may not adversely affect fiscal balances. Yet for all the Tigers, factors such as changing illness patterns, modernization of the medical sector, upgrading of the labor force, and income distributional concerns will combine with demography to intensify budgetary pressures. How the Tigers address these developments and their ultimate fiscal cost is thus uncertain. The paper examines some of the broader challenges of policy reform in the pension and medical care sectors, noting that the social management tasks challenging the Tigers will become more complicated and costly. The paper comments on the implications of the Tigers' approach of relying on private sector insurance systems in the pensions and medical sphere. While there is much that is innovative, the Tigers are also grappling with the insufficiency of these private sector initiatives in correcting for market failure, suggesting the need for complementary public sector policies to ensure competitive markets and reflect distributional concerns. An important consequence of increased reliance on private sector approaches is the increasing difficulty posed for fiscal analyses. Private sector financing instruments, often mandatory, are no longer captured as fiscal instruments, thus complicating the analysis of their allocative and distributional implications. The database on "quasi-public" sector issues is also weaker. This suggests the problems that arise for assessing fiscal developments in those countries seeking to emulate the approaches of the Tigers.

Fuente: Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI)
Clasificación: Demografía
Tipo de Publicación: Documentos de Trabajo
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Pensions, Social Security, and the Distribution of Wealth

Autor: Kennickell, Arthur B.; Sundén, Annika E.
Año: 1997
Resumen: For most households, pensions and Social Security are the most important sources of income during retirement, and the promised benefit stream constitutes a sizable fraction of household wealth. This paper uses the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to examine pension coverage, estimate Social Security and pension wealth for U.S. households in 1989 and 1992, and to estimate the effects of pension wealth on non-pension net worth. As expected, the SCF data show that including pensions and Social Security in net worth makes the distribution more even. The analysis of the effects of pension wealth on other types of savings indicates that there is a negative effect of defined benefit plan coverage on non-pension net worth. Surprisingly, the effect of defined contribution plans, such as 401(k) plans is insignificant. Social Security also has an insignificant effect on non-pension saving.

Fuente: Junta de Gobernadores de la Reserva Federal
Clasificación: Seguro
Tipo de Publicación: Documentos de Trabajo
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