In classical pension design, there are essentially two kinds of pension schemes: Defined Benefit (DB) and Defined Contribution (DC) plans. Each scheme corresponds to a different philosophy of spreading risk between the stakeholders: in a DB, the main risks are taken by the organizer of the plan,...

Countries in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (CESE) face the challenge of becoming "demographically old before being economically rich". Ensuring the long-term stability and adequacy of pension systems was one of the most important tasks that these countries faced following economic...

Concern about the long-term sustainability of European public pension systems has been a permanent feature for decades due to the unstoppable ageing of the population, but demographic change is not the only factor of concern. A deep economic and financial crisis has been added to this structural...

The aim of this chapter is to review the main instruments and indicators used to measure the sustainability of PAYG pension systems. It will distinguish between defined contribution and defined benefit systems, due to the various implications that each of them has. It will also be necessary to...

In pay-as-you go pension systems, automatic balancing mechanisms (ABMs) are designed to face adverse demographic and economic changes. In this respect, ABMs can be defined as a set of pre-determined measures established by law to be applied immediately as required according to an indicator that...

The literature has addressed the problem of pensions and has reached an almost unanimous conclusion that increased longevity is the main cause of the problem. However, in our opinion, longevity itself is not a problem and, therefore, should not be the cause of the problem of pensions. The real...