Ageing Gracefully? A Bootstrap Analysis of Poverty Among Pensioners Using Evidence from the PACO Databases

In 1998 Hungary embarked on a course of comprehensive pension reform. The reforms are likely to change the distribution of incomes of future generations. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. From a policy point of view, we analyse poverty and income inequality among pensioners in Hungary before the introduction of pension reforms. We find that the old system was expensive but that it provided effective - albeit not efficient - poverty relief. From a methodological point of view, we demonstrate the usefulness of bootstrapping techniques for statistical inference for poverty and inequality measures when sample survey data are used.