The paper examines pension reform under ageing. Using stylised facts, ageing is traced to low fertility and increasing longevity. Given these persistent factors, pension systems must be reformed to avoid an unfair burden being left for future generations.

In welfare states, collective saving has declined to a persistently negative level, while reduced fertility and increasing longevity are leading to increasing pension liabilities. Actuarial neutrality across generations is presented as a benchmark for designing pension reforms to meet the...

This paper studies saving in an economy where decline in fertility to a permanently lower level and increasing longevity are changing the age structure permanently and where the public pension system helps to smooth consumption over a lifetime of working and retirement. A simple overlapping...

The aim of this paper is to analyse options for reforming the fragmented Chinese pension system that covers only 55 % of urban employees and a very small part of the rural population. After a brief history of pensions in China we present recent reform proposals and then discuss principles of...

This paper explores how the Stability and Growth Pact may cope with the future costs of population ageing in the European Union. Clearly, population ageing has forced countries to reform their pension systems, and will continue to do so, both by reducing the generosity of pension arrangements...

The paper incorporates intergenerational fairness into a framework to analyse long-term sustainability of public finances under population ageing. It establishes a link between ageing-related public expenditure projections and public finance targets, thereby clarifying the connection between...

Preparations are underway to revise national accounting to implement actuarial recording of pension liabilities for corporations and government as an employer. This paper extends this to unfunded public pensions with the help of ‘implicit tax' in pension contributions. The clearest...

This paper reviews the projections of the Economic Policy Committee and the European Commission on age-related expenditure carried out in 2005. It takes a closer look at the results of public pension expenditure projections with a view of analysing the timing of projected changes and the driving...

This paper on European Union (EU) pension reform provides an overview of the debate and, on the basis of a series of model simulations, makes an empirical assessment of the main pension policy reform options at the EU, not the Member State, level. It estimates what it would take to bring the...

There is a general consensus that monetary stability in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) requires sustainable public finances of the member states. In order to maintain a high degree of sustainability in Stage III of EMU, attention might shift away from the numerical criteria regarding overall...