Modern Pension Systems at the Stage of Transformation
Keywords:
Social policy, pension reforms, human potential, employment of older workers, financial stability of pension system, additional collective pension insurance, automatic adjustmentAbstract
The article discusses the main directions of reforming pension systems in foreign countries, which will be combined into several blocks. Firstly, these are measures which increase employment and prolong the working life of older age groups, including soft incentive measures. Noticeable progress has been made in this area: the average effective age of retirement of persons aged 55 and older has significantly increased, but the task of maintaining a reasonable ratio between the duration of the period of earnings rights to a pension and the duration of the period of its receipt still does not lose its relevance. Secondly, the use of a wide arsenal of tools to improve the ratio of pensions and previously received employee income from employment, including improving the mechanisms for calculating and indexing pensions, the use of funded defined contributions and notionally defined contributions programs, inclusion in insurance systems of special categories of workers, support for the development of additional professional insurance. Solidary pay-as-you-go systems and funded systems are being complemented by alternative structures: noninsurance and insurance elements with mandatory, quasi-mandatory and voluntary participation of employees and employers. The third direction concerns solving the traditional task of pension provision — reducing the level of income poverty and material excess among older citizens. And finally, the fourth block includes the issues of expanding sources of pension funding and maintaining the financial stability of existing systems. Special attention is paid to the issues of automatic adjustment of pension systems parameters and indicators used for this. These mechanisms are considered as the most important modern innovations aimed at increasing equity from an intergenerational perspective, but like discrete reforms, these adjustments are mainly aimed at improving financial stability by reducing income guarantees for current and future pensioners and, as practice shows, with a sharp or permanent reduction in the real size of pensions or changes in the social-economic situation, they are suspended or canceled.
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