Spurred by the ageing transition, many governments have made wide-ranging reforms, dramatically changing Europe's pensions landscape. Nevertheless there remain concerns about future costs, while unease about adequacy is growing. This study develops a comprehensive framework to assess pension...

This paper reviews changes in pension policies in EU countries between 1995 and 2005 and describes how they might affect risk of poverty for future pensioner populations. The pension landscape in Europe has changed considerably in the past decade and the paper highlights commonalities as well as...

The universal pensions schema has mandatory character and is guaranteed by the state. State is an administrator of the socialsecurity systems and sometimes as finance provider. In case of financial dis-equilibrium situations of the social insurance balance, the state grants loans to finance the...

Zwei wichtige rentenpolitische Fragen werden aktuell diskutiert und stehen zur Entscheidung an: Soll der Beitragssatz zur gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung gesenkt werden, und sollte eine Zuschussrente zur Verringerung des Altersarmutsrisikos eingeführt werden. Hans Fehr, Universität Würzburg,...

We use a US Social Security reform as a quasi-experiment to provide evidence on framing effects in retirement behavior. The reform increased the full retirement age (FRA) from 65 to 66 in two-month increments per year of birth. We find strong evidence that the spike in the benefit claiming...

Knowledge about how elderly workers react to changes in pension benefits is important in guiding the design of social security systems. This paper contributes to this knowledge by examining the effect of changed replacement rates on part-time retirement behaviour in Sweden. During the 1980s,...

The Swedish pension reform of 1999-2003 provides an opportunity to study whether and how important economic incentives are for the timing of retirement. The new pension system provides a much closer link between contributions and benefits than the former system. I study whether the reform has...

The effects of pension programme incentives on retirement in Denmark are analysed in an option value framework. Using eligibility criteria and detailed entitlement rules for the five main publicly funded retirement programmes, we calculate social security wealth, one year pension accrual and...

The main objective of this paper is to estimate labour supply effects of an early retirement programme in Norway. Detailed administrative data are employed in order to characterize full paths towards retirement and account for substitution from other exit routes, such as unemployment and...

Im Rahmen der Bildungsexpansion hat sich die Bildungsbeteiligung der Frauen aus der Babyboomer- Kohorte deutlich erhöht. Die Frage ist, ob das gestiegene Bildungsniveau vermittelt über die Erwerbs - verläufe der Frauen auch zu höheren Rentenanwartschaften führt. Hinsichtlich dieser Frage...