Ageing with Dignity: Old-Age Pension Schemes from the Perspective of the Right to Social Security Under ICESCR

The ‘dignity and worth of the human person’ emphasised in international human rights instruments resonate strongly in relation to the world’s ageing population, which is projected to be the fastest growing population group in the world and often among the most vulnerable. While elderly persons as a group are heterogeneous and their socio-economic life situation varies significantly between individuals, the need for universal support mechanisms such as non-contributory old-age benefits have been recognised by many states, and currently, over 100 countries around the world provide some form of social pension targeted towards the elderly populations. This article appraises a sample of these old-age pension schemes from the perspective of the right to social security, with particular emphasis on the dignity and worth of the human person as espoused within the international human rights regime.     

强制性企业年金制度及其对金融发展的影响——澳大利亚、冰岛和瑞士三国案例分析

分析了澳大利亚、冰岛和瑞士三国建立强制性企业年金制度的历史原因,以及该制度的基本特征,考察了三国企业年金基金的投资管理,在分析现有数据的基础上,通过比较分析表明:企业年金资产要独立于雇主企业和政府,这是建立良好治理结构的前提;增加企业年金计划的竞争性、提高信息披露程度、增强决策透明度是提高企业年金投资回报率的有效手段;审慎和恰当的政府监管是企业年金发展的重要条件;在适当控制风险的前提下,追求投资回报率仍是企业年金最重要的目标。从养老金制度的充足性、可负担性、可持续性和稳健性四个方面评估了强制性企业年金制度的作用,从而得出:强制性企业年金制度不仅实现了全面覆盖,而且在保障养老金制度可负担、可持续和稳健性的同时较好地实现了充足性的目标。利用格兰杰因果检验,实证分析了澳大利亚和冰岛两国企业年金发展和金融发展之间存在的协整关系:澳大利亚的企业年金发展和金融发展互为格兰杰因果关系,而冰岛企业年金发展是该国金融发展的格兰杰原因。     

The privatisation of welfare: The impact of parties on the private/public mix in pension provision

The Conservative governments of 1979–95 have encouraged private sector pension provision to the extent that it covers two‐thirds of the British workforce. It is now possible to consider moving from the universal system of state provision laid down in the Beveridge scheme to a targeted system. Indeed, it has been suggested that the basic state pension should be abolished. However, if we consider the policy initiatives of the 1980s it would not seem that Conservative policy differs markedly from the policies pursued by the Conservative Party in the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, there are also some similarities with the Labour Party policy. In this sense the case of pensions would appear to support the view that Thatcherism was less radical than has been generally claimed and represents a continuation of past policy. However, if we employ models of welfare state development to analyse policy outcomes we can demonstrate how the cumulative effect of individual policies pursued by the Conservatives has led to a change in the character of the British welfare state and thus the continuities with past policy may be deceptive.     

The Survival and Return of Institutions: Examples from Pension Reforms in Central,Eastern and South-eastern Europe

Opening a new phase in historical institutionalism, Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen show how a rigid dichotomy between incremental adaptation and radical transformation fails to capture important transformative processes common to advanced political economies. While their research focuses on gradual but radical transformation, the two authors leave open the interpretation of what constitutes abrupt, but only limited change. This article integrates their framework, defines what they call survival and return, and, within this genus, indicates two analytically distinct species: replication, where the old logic survives due to the redundancy of the new institutional arrangement; and reaction, where structural reforms generate demand for the old incentive structures, which are ultimately reintroduced. To elucidate the concepts, recent Croatian, Hungarian and Polish pension reforms are compared and their institutional instability analysed.     

Pension Reform in Germany and Austria: System Change vs. Quantitative Retrenchment

This article first outlines the differences in outcome of pension reform in Germany and Austria. The 2001 German pension reform cut benefits very little, but it started a system changing transformation process by strengthening the second (occupational pensions) and third pillar (private pensions). The 2003 Austrian pension reform, pushed through against major opposition from the labour unions, contains very few elements of policy innovation, but benefits have been cut back much more significantly than in the German case. The paper explains the difference in outcomes (system change in Germany, retrenchment in Austria) by looking at the structure of political institutions. The federal government in Austria is much less constrained by formal veto players than the German government, which had to engage in extensive coalition-building to get the pension bill through the second chamber of parliament. Therefore the influence of informal veto players (mainly unions) was much higher in Germany. The impact on the reform outcome was the positive discrimination of occupational pensions and less severe cuts in the benefit levels. The concluding thesis is that for successful and long-term sustainable welfare state reform, a small number of formal veto players is a valuable resource. A large number of formal veto players is an obstacle to retrenchment reforms, although it might encourage policy innovation, because political actors will look for other policy venues to increase their leverage.     

Social security reform in Central and Eastern Europe: variations on a Latin American theme

After Chile reformed its social security system in 1981, several other Latin American countries and certain Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries implemented the Chilean model, with some variations: either a single- or multitier system, or with a period of transition to take care of those in the labor force at the time of the change. The single-tier version consists of individual accounts in pension fund management companies. Multi-tier systems retain some form of public program and add mandatory individual accounts. Most of the CEE countries did not want to incur the high transition costs associated with the Chilean model. The switch to a market economy had already strained their economies. Also, the countries' desire to adopt the European Union's Euro as their currency--a move that required a specific debt ceiling--limited the amount of additional debt they could incur. This article describes the CEE reforms and makes some comparisons with the Latin American experience. Most of the CEE countries have chosen a mixed system and have restructured the pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) tier, while the Latin American countries have both single- and multi-tier systems. Some CEE countries have set up notional defined contribution (NDC) schemes for the PAYGO tier in which each insured person has a hypothetical account made up of all contributions during his or her working life. Survivors and disability programs in CEE have remained in the public tier, but in most of the Latin American programs the insured must purchase a separate insurance policy. Issues common to both regions include: Administrative costs are high and competition is keen, which has led to consolidation and mergers among the companies and a large market share controlled by a few companies. Benefits are proportionately lower for women than for men. A large, informal sector is not covered by social security. This sector is apparently much larger in Latin America than in the CEE countries. Issues that are unique to some of the CEE countries include: Individual accounts in Hungary and Poland have proved more attractive than originally anticipated. As a result, contributions to the public PAYGO system in Hungary and Poland fell short of expectations. In several countries, laws setting up the programs were enacted without all the details of providing benefits. For example, in some countries laws must now be drawn up for establishment of annuities because they do not yet exist. Setting up a coherent pension policy has been difficult in some countries because of frequent and significant changes in government. This situation has affected the progress of reform in various stages of development. In general, a definitive assessment of individual accounts in these countries will not be possible until a cohort of retirees has spent most of its career under the new system.     

财政支出比较视角下公务员退休金制度设计

公务员退休金和企业职工养老保险金的待遇差是社会热点问题,并波及事业单位养老金制度改革,助长了提前退休浪潮。机关公务员与企业人员退休后收入的待遇差来自人员身份和计算方法的制度隔墙,本文审视了针对公务员养老金的政府责任和财政负担,探讨了中国公务员退休金制度的新路径,即三元组合的公务员养老金制度。养老金制度目标有两个,一是通过国民基础养老金避免老年贫困;二是通过职业养老金个人账户实现老年体面生活。公务员作为公民应享有国民基础养老金,作为政府雇员应享有职业养老金并附之以廉政奖励养老金,政府应当分别承担相应责任。通过模型计算和实际数据模拟计算表明,新制度初期财政支出超过原有制度,但若干年后低于原有制度,本文提出的模型和政策建议具有不降低公务员养老金待遇的同时减轻未来政府财政负担的效应。     

Governance and governmentality: a discussion in the context of UK private pension provision

Abstract

While the governance of pension schemes, and the risk this poses for pension savers, is a prominent issue in current pension debate in the UK, this paper places that debate in, arguably, the more important context of the governance of individual behaviour. Using the concept of governmentality as a means of interpreting the course of recent UK pension policy and its attempts to influence individual saving behaviour, it critiques that policy. The paper then goes on to consider the effect of the introduction of personal accounts upon the pensions landscape, and in particular its potential to push forward the government's recent approach to pension provision. It argues that these reforms, rather than furthering individual saving for retirement, may alternatively create the very real possibility of undermining it.     

The Political-Economic Dimension of Pensions: The Case of Japan

This article examines how pensions are interwoven with the public and private financial system in Japan and the consequences for pension reform. A growing literature focuses on the multifaceted ways in which pensions are interwoven with the larger political economy. This study builds on this literature and finds that (a) public and private pensions have been integrated deeply into Japan's system of developmental finance, (b) this integration has created new economic and political problems as governments have attempted to shift away from its developmental model through deregulation, liberalization, and administrative reform, and (c) because pension reform is intimately linked with these reforms, it involves addressing fundamental issues regarding the role of the state, finance, and firms. These findings collectively illustrate that pension reform is not only driven by issues of fiscal viability and benefit levels, but also by the nature of the way in which pensions are integrated into a country's system of finance.     

Political shirking and the last term problem: Evidence for a party-administered pension system

Studies of political shirking have disagreed both over whether the voting behavior of Members of Congress changes in their last term, and over the manner in which last term shirking can be controlled: through electoral sorting, or through a pension system. This paper presents evidence that Members of Congress who leave the House to run for statewide office do alter their voting behavior between the two sessions of their last House term, and that this change includes an ideological shift toward their state party delegations. The results suggest that a party-driven pension system influences the voting of House members who aspire to higher office, but that the pension system is not sufficient to control the last term shirking likely to occur if term limitations were imposed on House members.     

The politics of policy adoption: a saga on the difficulties of enacting policy diffusion or transfer across industrialized countries

While studies of policy diffusion and policy transfer have focused largely on industrialized countries, it is the exact opposite when it comes to pension policies where the focus remains on national elements such as institutions and partisanship. Focusing on a case with a high degree of programmatic similarities, this contribution fills this gap by analyzing the adoptive process in an industrialized country. The empirical analysis involves the transfer and diffusion of the Swedish pension reform in Norway. Norway has a long history of borrowing from Sweden. Following a highly publicized Swedish pension reform embraced by the World Bank, Norwegian policy makers could have easily introduced this reform at home when they embarked into a reform process in the early 2000s. By analyzing core policy instruments of the Swedish pension reform and the agenda-setting and the formulation stages in the policy process in the Norwegian case, this contribution explains why it proves complex and difficult to attribute the outcome of a reform to a diffuser and it argues that more attention is needed on the process behind the adoption of policies from abroad.     

Pension Privatization: Evolution of a Paradigm

From 1981 to 2004, a paradigm shift occurred in pension systems worldwide as more than 30 countries fully or partially replaced their state‐administered pay‐as‐you‐go pension systems with ones based on individual, private savings accounts. Yet in 2005, pension privatization abruptly stopped. After the 2008 crisis, several countries that had privatized their pension systems scaled back or even canceled individual accounts. Is the new pension paradigm dead? And if so, why? This article shows that fiscal and ideational factors caused a temporary halt to pension privatization worldwide and induced transnational pension policy networks to find new ways to respond to perceived failures. Adjustments to the new pension paradigm such as emphasizing minimum pensions and recommending that governments “nudge” rather than mandate pension savings will enable pension privatization to continue in years ahead, albeit in a revised form.     

Will you still trust me tomorrow? The causal effect of terrorism on social trust

The absence of a deselection threat in incumbents’ last term in office can be negative or positive for the polity. Some politicians may reduce their efforts, while others may pursue beneficial long-term policies that may be unpopular in the short term. We propose a novel pension system that solves the effort problem while preserving the willingness to implement long-term policies. The idea is to give politicians the option to choose between a flexible and a fixed pension scheme. While in the fixed scheme, performance has no impact on the pension, the pension increases with short-term performance in the flexible scheme, using the vote share of the officeholder’s party in the next election as a performance indicator. Such a pension choice improves the well-being of citizens since officeholders are encouraged to invest in those activities that are beneficial for society. We analyze the properties and consequences of such a system. Finally, we extend the pension system with choice to non-last-term situations and derive a general welfare result.     

事业单位养老金制度的帕累托改进条件分析

事业单位养老金制度是社会保障体系的重要组成部分,本文分析了目前我国事业单位养老金制度的弊端及改革滞后的主要原因和存在问题,提出了"职业养老金替代退休金和对接国民基础养老金"的二元结构事业单位养老金方案;利用世代交替模型,求出这一制度安排相对于原有的退休金制度,实现"事业单位职工的养老金待遇不降低,我国整体养老金制度得到改善,财政养老金负担趋于下降"这一"帕累托改进"目标的条件;分析了该二元结构养老金方案的帕累托改进效应及这一方案在推进国民基础养老金改革、促进职业养老金和养老金市场的发展、完善养老金个人账户和公共服务体系等方面所能发挥的积极的社会效应;分析了方案实施的政治、经济和社会基础并通过仿真分析验证了本方案的有效性和可行性。     

社会治理视野下的工会转型与政府角色研究——以浙江省YW市工会维权模式为个案

当前社会转型给政府带来了职能转变的需要,也使中国工会的角色和功能发生了变化,即由“行政附属机构”逐渐转为承担“治理”功能的社会组织。但工会转型步履维艰,主要表现为旧的工会体制对新的治理需求的不适应。本文以浙江省YW市工会维权的新实践为例,认为相对于转型时期的发展中国家而言,工会转型的一条可能性路径是借助政府的力量,在现有的组织资源和熟悉的制度框架内整合利益关系,实现社会的治理化需求。     

养老产业政策体系及其协调性--基于政策文本的量化分析

发展养老产业是应对未来深度老龄化的重要国家战略。聚焦养老产业政策体系,构建其协调性分析框架,选取调查2006—2018年中央、陕西省及安康市的资料,分析国家、省、市三级层面现行养老产业政策文本,应用MAXQDA软件对其进行编码,采用文本内容分析、共词分析、社会网络分析与聚类分析方法,对养老产业政策层级、政策发展历程、政策主体、政策效力、政策专项性、政策内容等进行双维协调性定量分析。研究发现:养老产业政策体系内部不同层级之间政策联系紧密,涉及的政策各要素较为完备,但仍然存在纵向、横向维度中的不协调因素。应通过丰富养老产业政策类型与内容、优化体系结构、加强相关部门合作等有效措施,进一步提升养老产业政策体系的协调性,为推动养老产业的健康可持续发展奠定制度基础。     

The Myth of Chinese Exceptionalism: The Case of Welfare Transition in a Globalized Economy

China’s social welfare system in the past three decades has undergone a fundamental transformation. This process is part of a general movement occurring in the developing world in the new context of globalization. Globalization has produced a structural change of preferences among major social actors with regards to social protection, which in turn induces the governments to adopt a balanced and inclusive approach of social protection that is compatible to market competition and continuous development. What distinguishes China in achieving this objective is the combination of the government’s commitment to openness and its strategic policy adjustment that, working together, induce the vested interests from the public sector to accept the new institutions in a timely manner so that the welfare programs assist the economy in exploring the opportunities offered by the international market.     

Political Embeddedness of Public Pension Governance: An Event History Analysis of Discount Rate Changes

State governments are frequently said to manipulate the discount rate assumption to make pension funding look better, reduce employers' and employees' pension contributions, or relieve fiscal stress. Building a model from the political embeddedness perspective and applying an event history analysis to the 81 largest state‐administered pension plans in the United States, the authors found that more politically embedded pension boards were actually more likely to reduce their plan's discount rate. Public union coverage and government political ideology, however, had no significant impact on discount rate changes. These findings reveal the effect of political embeddedness on pension planning decisions and provide useful insights into the intricate process of setting pension discount rates in a new era of more muted investment return expectations. This article points to both political and financial pressures facing pension boards and state governments for many years to come.     

Trends in the economic status of the elderly, 1976-2000

The economic well-being of elderly Americans (aged 65 or older) improved between 1976 and 2000. Overall, poverty rates fell during this period, median real income rose, and median income relative to the working-age population was relatively stable. Most population subgroups shared in the reduced poverty rates; however, the economic status of elderly Hispanics did not improve. This article attempts to explain those economic trends by identifying changes in five sources of income for the elderly and analyzing the changes in the context of demographic changes in the elderly populations over the past 25 years. As a result of increased longevity, for example, larger proportions of elderly men and women are now 80 or older, and smaller proportions are 65 to 69. Hispanics and Asian Americans make up a larger share of the elderly population and whites a smaller share. The fraction of women who are married has increased, the fraction who are widowed has fallen, and the fraction who are divorced has grown. Such demographic changes can greatly affect the economic status of subgroups as well as the overall elderly population. Of the five sources of income for the elderly, Social Security remains the most prevalent and important. While both the rate of receipt and the share of aggregate income from Social Security benefits stayed relatively steady over the past 25 years, the average real Social Security benefit increased because of rising wages. Income from assets, the second most important source of income for the elderly, fluctuated. Because the elderly are more likely to hold interest-bearing assets such as bonds rather than stocks, their asset income is responsive to changes in nominal interest rates and bond yields. Receipt of pension income increased during this period, although it leveled off during the 1990s. Factors contributing to this pattern include enactment of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, which increased protections of pension benefits for spouses, and improved labor market opportunities for blacks and women. In recent years, defined contribution pension plans have become more prevalent than defined benefit plans, but the full effect of this change on pension income may not yet be apparent. After decades of decline, labor force participation rates of older men leveled out in the mid-1980s and then increased. For older women, the trend before the mid-1980s was flat, but since then rates have risen substantially. The increased use of part-time jobs or self-employment to ease the transition into retirement, the economic expansion of the 1990s, and the liberalization of the Social Security earnings test may all have contributed to those trends. Although the percentage of elderly people with earnings has increased only modestly in the past few years, the share of income from earnings has grown substantially--from 16 percent of income in 1984 to 23 percent in 2000. Finally, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits are indexed for inflation but not for growth in real wages. As real incomes of the elderly rose, therefore, fewer elderly persons were eligible to receive SSI or, for those receiving SSI, were eligible for smaller benefits. The proportion of elderly persons receiving public assistance, primarily SSI, declined from 11 percent in 1976 to 5 percent in 2000.