Successive reforms enacted since the 1990s have dramatically changed Europe’s pensions landscape. This paper tries to assess the impact of recent reforms on the ability of systems to alleviate poverty and maintain living standards, using estimates of pension wealth for a number of hypothetical...

Most assessments of pension sustainability focus on the projected fall in spending. However interest in the impact on adequacy, usually measured by replacement rates, is increasing. In this paper we show that replacement rates have significant defects, related to being point-in-time indicators...

A social security system which works properly should be universal and equitable, ensuring a minimum standard to all beneficiaries and sustainable over time. The literature agrees that the central objectives of them are the prevention of poverty among the elderly and consumption smoothing over...

The pension system is an essential component within social security. Due to several reasons, among which the current international financial crisis and the rapid aging of the population that is happening in many countries outstand, throughout these last few years several reforms have been...

This article provides a brief summary of the most recent changes in public pension policies in the countries of the European Union and describes how they affect pension benefits for future pensioners. The pension systems in Europe have been changing fast. The common trends are that the...

The prevention of social exclusion and poverty of elderly people is one of the key objectives of the national social policies. Bearing in mind the variety and diversity of national pensions and social assistance systems, the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) in the field of pensions was...

This United Nations Policy Note on Social Policy provides practical guidance on how to operationalize alternative equitable and employment-generating social policies in National Development Strategies. This Policy Note has been developed in cooperation with UN agencies, and has been officially...

In this paper I analyse a labour market where the wage is endogenously determined according to an Efficient Bargaining process between a firm and a labour union whose members are partitioned into two social groups: the old and the young. Furthermore, I exploit the Single-Mindedness theory, which...

Briefly, some of our findings are as follows. First, the impacts of a universal NCP scheme on poverty rates and the poverty gap of the older persons would be significant, but become less potent when the eligibility age is higher. In particular, with the benefits provided, the older persons who...