Pension Reform in the EU Accession Countries: Challenges, Achievements and Pitfalls

Like the current member States of the European Union (EU), the 13 accession countries have diverse pension systems that vary in the adequacy of benefits, the degree of solidarity, and the roles of government, workers, employers, and pension funds in scheme management. Since the mid-1990s, nearly all have increased their pensionable age and adopted new systems for voluntary supplemental pension savings. Five have scaled down their social insurance schemes in favour of new systems of commercially managed individual savings accounts. The article discusses these reforms and their match with key elements of the countries' political and economic environments, financial markets and regulatory experience. It highlights alternative approaches to pension protection for retired workers in conditions of ageing populations.     

‘Fragmented authoritarianism’ – the facilitator behind the Chinese reform miracle: a case study in central China

Although it maintains an authoritarian power structure, China has been widely perceived as one of most decentralized nations in the world in terms of government spending. The concept of ‘fragmented authoritarianism’ has figured largely in academic discussions of China's regime. It raises the question of how such apparently opposed states – ‘fragmentation’ and ‘authoritarianism’ – co-exist. In particular, how can so many important economic and political reforms have been launched in a milieu of fragmented authoritarianism? An analysis of an intergovernmental jurisdiction reform launched by city leaders suggests that fragmented authoritarianism facilitated the reform miracle. Fragmentation supplies the room and space for reform and change, while authoritarianism provides the power and authority for leaders to launch such reforms. That is why China has been able to remain united through a process of dramatic change.     

A macro‐financial analysis of pension system reforms in emerging Europe: The performance of IRAs and policy lessons for Serbia

The article explores the initial macro‐financial performance of partial pension system “privatizations”— involving privately‐managed individual retirement savings accounts (IRAs) — undertaken in many emerging European countries. Using empirical data for a period of close to a decade, the evidence shows that returns on privately‐managed IRAs have been below the implicit rate of return of public pay‐as‐you‐go (PAYG) systems. High operating costs and undeveloped capital markets are identified as major contributing factors to the failure of privately‐managed IRAs to meet reform expectations. In light of empirical evidence, Serbia is advised to focus on parametric PAYG reforms and to avoid reforms that involve the partial “privatization” of the pension system.     

The Changing Conception of Pension Rights in Canada, Mexico and the United States

Relying on four conceptualizations of the welfare state (universalism, redistribution, state capacity, and intergenerational equity), this article presents an overview of recent pension reforms in Canada, Mexico and the United States. Each country has introduced important reforms in the past 25 years and is currently engaged in debates to make other adjustments. The state is reducing its financial and programmatic commitment towards current and future retirees and is promulgating reforms tightening the link between contributions and benefits. In Canada, the government raised contribution rates substantially to maintain the same level of benefits while it sought to alter its universal flat-rate benefit. In the USA, changes to Social Security have resulted in a higher retirement age and lower replacement rates. In the case of Mexico, the most important public schemes have actually been privatized.     

The limits of parametric reforms in sustaining the Algerian retirement system in a context of population ageing

Accelerated population ageing in Algeria threatens the financial sustainability of its pay-as-you-go retirement system. Reform is a necessity, with options ranging from simple parametric reforms to important systemic changes. Prior to undertaking systemic reforms, it is worthwhile to investigate whether parametric reforms can place the system on a financially sustainable footing. In this article, we used a multi-scenario analysis that crosses the possible reform actions with possible socioeconomic scenarios. The results show that when using the most favourable scenarios, the financial balance of the Algerian system will remain negative in the short and long term. Implementing major parametric reforms can only help reduce the deficit and make it stable over time. Thereafter, systemic reforms will have to be implemented.     

新管理主义时代香港社会福利领域NGO之发展

全球第三部门正处在发展的十字路口,面临转型的挑战。本文运用个案研究方法,试图探讨20世纪90年代以来新管理主义如何影响香港社会福利领域NGO的发展。研究发现,尽管新管理主义的价值观已深植于NGO领域,但不同个案机构对其影响的回应不尽相同;组织的社会倡导价值对于市场化价值的妥协在本研究中虽有体现,但如何使商界更加关注社会福利的改善正日益成为香港NGO实践其倡导价值的新关注点。     

A Review of Institutional Reform over the Past 30 Years from the Perspective of Change Management

The Leading Group for Deepening Reform Comprehensively has been set up on the decision of the CPC Central Committee to be in charge of the overall planning of reform, taking a balanced and coordinated approach, advancing reform as a whole and supervising its implementation. This means that change management has become an important item on the agenda. Systematically reviewing and examining the course of the seven rounds of institutional reform introduced by the State Council since 1978 from the perspective of change management, we find that the reforms have advanced gradually and steadily, with functional transformation as the core feature and key to each round of reform. The transformation of government functions exhibits a marked two-phase character. The first phase focuses on change in government functions relating to economic management, while the second focuses on enhancing and improving macro-control systems to strengthen social management and public service functions. However, in terms of program design, the goals and measures of the past 10 years’ functional transformation have clearly not been specific enough to establish a clear relationship between the three rounds of institutional reform programs and the concrete measures and their effects. Therefore, the question of whether institutional reform itself needs reform has become a new proposition for practice, one that needs to be reviewed in terms of strategic orientation, mode of implementation, public responsibilities and overall design.     

Global pension systems and their reform: Worldwide drivers,trends and challenges

Across the world, pension systems and their reforms are in a constant state of flux driven by a shifting focus, moving reform needs, and a changing enabling environment that reflect objective events but also changes in views and perception. The ongoing worldwide financial crisis and the adjustment to an uncertain “new normal” will make future pension systems different from past ones. The objectives of this article are: i) to briefly review recent and ongoing key changes that are triggering reforms; ii) to outline the main reform trends across pension pillars over the last two decades; and iii) to present key policy areas on which the pension reform community will need to focus to make a difference.     

Structural reform of social security pensions in Latin America: Models, characteristics, results and conclusions

The structural reform of social security pensions is the subject of international debate, and Latin America has been a pioneer of such reform. The region has gathered experience over two decades, and had an important influence on other regions. This article gathers legal and statistical data about reform in ten countries of Latin America, in order (1) to analyse the three distinct general models followed and note the characteristics of the reforms in the different countries; (2) to evaluate the performance of the reforms against nine conventional assumptions about its effects; (3) to draw useful lessons from these reforms for the region and other countries.     

Mark Time: India's March to Universal Health Care Coverage

This article evaluates the efforts underway in India to achieve universal health care coverage and the conditions that fostered its contemporary evolution. It finds that India’s health system is characterized by private provision and financing, horizontal and vertical fragmentation, and weak governance arrangements. The article argues that these defining characteristics, which have solidified over time, account for poor health outcomes and make the system impervious to reforms as they deny the government levers to intervene and shape outcomes in the sector. While the government's recent efforts of increased public funding of national programmes have helped to reduce out of pocket spending, these are unlikely to work in the long run unless the government addresses the sources of the problems. The article argues that building health care governance, strengthening regulatory architecture, and stewardship over the system, in conjunction with increased public spending, are essential if the health care system is to provide affordable care to the entire population.     

Land Finance and the Tax-sharing System： An Empirical Interpretation

地方政府的区域竞争推动了中国经济的迅速增长,其中的作用机制有待发掘。地方政府行为受中央与地方关系的影响,尤其受分税制以来财税体制改革的影响。分税制集中财权使地方政府逐渐走向以土地征用、开发和出让为主的发展模式,从而形成了土地财政;利用省级的年度数据验证了两者之间的密切关系。无论如何评价以土地财政为代表的发展模式,与财政包干制相比,分税制都是一个理性化的制度变革,其建立了中央与地方之间关系的稳定互动框架,而以土地为中心的城市扩张模式是这次改革的意外后果。     

The 2022 Greek pension reform: The rebirth of carve-out privatization in Eastern Europe

After a decade of unprecedented austerity, Greece abruptly changed the course of pension consolidation in 2022 and implemented the controversial carve-out pension funding approach, whereby a portion of existing pay-as-you-go (PAYG) contributions are diverted to fund individual pension savings, thus undermining the financing of existing PAYG pensions. Although inspired by the World Bank’s 1994 pension privatization blueprint, the Greek 2022 reform features a major policy shift by entrusting the management of individual pension savings to a dedicated government body, ostensibly to try to remedy inherent market failures in private pension provision. Like earlier reforms in Eastern Europe, the multi-decade transition costs of carve-out funding have been vastly underestimated in Greece, which will give rise to fiscal distress in the coming years when annual transition costs become sizeable and favourable international financing terms start to change. Unless firm political commitment is established to implement the measures necessary to finance the transition costs, Greece may have to resort to reform reversals similar to those already implemented across Eastern Europe.     

Social Welfare Reform Since the 1997 Economic Crisis in Korea: Achievement, Limits, and Future Prospects

Social welfare reform has been implemented in Korea since the 1997 financial crisis. A dominant concern of the reform was on equality and social solidarity. A major means to this end was establishing universalistic social insurance programs like those in developed welfare states. The reform efforts produced some positive results but were not greatly successful. Income polarization and the deteriorating economic status of low-income families have become big social issues. Many low-income families have not gained many benefits from the reformed social security system. The rapid aging of the population is creating an exploding demand for social spending, risking the fiscal sustainability of major social insurance programs. The reform experience suggests that a social welfare system based on western-style universal social insurance may be too expensive to sustain and not very effective in protecting disadvantaged families in Korea. More attention is being paid to expenditure control and efficiency. Social insurance programs may need to be leaner than those in traditional welfare states. Targeted programs, such as the "making work pay" policy, are likely to be expanded more broadly to low-income families. The future of the Korean welfare state may hinge on successful employment support for working families and extensive investment in their human capital.     

"Risk" and UK Pension Reform

“Risk” is a word that has become common currency in the financial services industry in general, and in the pensions industry in particular. This article critically examines its use in the context of the current debate about UK pension reform. “Risk” is used by a broad spectrum of interests to discuss a wide range of pension issues in a variety of contexts. The article outlines key theoretical perspectives on the nature and construction, or conceptualization, of risk. Their relevance to debate and policy initiatives, particularly public pension policy, is examined. It is suggested that current government policy is failing to carry with it those to whom the policy applies; that reforms implicitly, if not explicitly, underestimate the importance of “security”; and that failure to conduct a much broader debate about the fundamental notions of work, retirement, saving and security may simply condemn the UK to interminable pension reform.     

Party control, policy reforms, and the impact on health insurance coverage in the U.S. states

Objectives. One of the major policy concerns at the federal and state level is the rising number of individuals without health insurance. The purpose of this article is to investigate whether party control of government and various state reforms impact the percentage of the state population without health insurance.Methods. Using data from 1987–2007, I empirically examine whether party control and five state policy reforms reduce the uninsured population.Results. The results show that Republicans are more effective than Democrats at the state level at reducing insurance gaps and that three of five policy reforms explored appear to significantly expand insurance coverage.Conclusions. The results provide valuable insight into which components of health-care reform at the national level may help address the health insurance problem.     

From Subsidiarity to 'Free Choice': Child- and Elder-care Policy Reforms in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands

This article analyses the patterns of reform in care policies in Bismarckian welfare systems since the early 1980s. Based on a comparison of France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, the article shows that these reforms share similar logics and trajectories, which can be explained by the shared conservative and corporatist traits of Bismarckian labour markets and welfare state institutions and their impact on labour market adjustment possibilities and preferences. Indeed, we argue that care policy reforms have been very closely linked to specific employment strategies, and the politics of welfare without work and subsequent attempts to shift away from such a labour-shedding strategy go a long way in explaining both the nature and the timing of child- and elder-care policy reforms in Bismarckian welfare systems. The article also shows how a focus on promoting ‘free choice’ in all four countries has justified the introduction of measures that have simultaneously reinforced social stratification in terms of access to the labour market – meaning that some women have much more ‘free choice’ than others – and weakened certain labour market rigidities. To conclude, we argue that care policy reforms have provided a backdoor for the introduction of labour-cheapening measures and for increasing employment flexibility in otherwise very rigid labour markets.     

The vicious layering of multilevel governance in Southern Europe: The case of elderly care in Italy and Spain

Aging and changes in family arrangements and female employment have brought about important policy developments in long‐term care (LTC). Southern European countries have relied for a long time on family care and residual social care for the dependent elderly. Two paradigmatic cases, Italy and Spain, have shown two apparently different trends during the last 15 years: while in Italy, reforms seem to have been persistently blocked, in Spain, an ambitious reform has fallen short of expectations. Based on data on services and institutional arrangements, the article shows that a complex and inconsistent allocation of responsibilities across government levels, a sort of “vicious layering” of multilevel governance, may be playing a key role in this situation. The article discusses the dysfunctional effects of such arrangements, namely territorial inequalities, cost‐shifting between government levels and towards users, and misallocation of resources. We suggest that the development and reform of LTC in Southern European countries must address these problems if they want to avoid getting marooned by a complex network of vetoes and resource allocation problems.     

从市场检验到政府职能转变——北京市公共服务供给模式改革分析

20世纪80年代以来,在"新公共管理"运动的推动下,以英国、新西兰、澳大利亚为代表的一些国家普遍实行了"公共服务市场化"改革。这一改革浪潮席卷世界,并逐步发展成为大多数国家转变政府职能的一种主流模式。实践证明,与传统的政府"自给自足"和"垄断供应"模式相比,以市场检验为标志的公共服务改革大大降低了公共服务供给成本,提高了公共服务效率,改善了公共部门运行绩效,并为充分运用市场力量推动政府改革提供了新的机遇和动力。     

Public Opinion On Taxes And Government Spending

This article analyses egalitarian attitudes as well as opinions concerning taxation and government spending. Australians would prefer to have their taxes reduced than to increase government spending on social services, if faced with such an alternative. Typical welfare programs have a low priority, but the public would like to see increased spending on education and science, health services, roads improvements, military defence, and fighting against drug addiction. An individual's opinions about government spending are influenced by his or her socio-economic characteristics, with unemployed people and urban dwellers being more supportive of government spending on social programs.     

国家综合配套改革试验区——区域经济发展的新模式探索

经过28年的改革开放,我国的经济体制改革已经进入攻坚阶段,改革的复杂性、艰巨性和风险性大大增强.经济领域内部各项改革的推进需要其他各项改革相配套,因此,改革的路径需要从单方面改革向综合配套改革转变。在这种形势下,国家综合配套改革试验区应运而生。这就需要从国家综合配套改革试验区的内涵和特征以及对区域经济发展的作用、机理以及政策建议等问题展开探讨。