Reforma de las pensiones y de los recursos de las personas mayores: algunas enseñanzas de las experiencias extranjeras

Abstract

For about the past ten years, all of the countries of the European Union have engaged processes for reforming their retirement regimes. This major transformation in one of the pillars of the social protection system directly affects modes of financing public pension schemes and, consequently, the resources of the current and future retirees. In order to provide enlightenment on the issues at stake, IRES and the ENRSP (European Network for Research on Supplementary Pensions) network organized an international conference in October 2002 on which this article presents the key findings. Despite the diversity of the concrete reform modalities in each country, the comparative approach highlights the similarities among the issues raised by such reforms. In particular, current transformations will have a sometimes considerable negative impact on the average pension level. In addition, these regressive reforms should also increase the risks assumed by employees and foster the development of capitalisation programmes. However, in all of the countries in which such programs have been implemented, their development raises numerous issues (the highly volatile nature of financial markets, fundamentally regressive distribution of the fiscal aids provided by these programs, increased inequalities between high and low salaries, between generations or between men and women). Ultimately, these points of assessment of the current reforms, in the least, cast serious doubt upon both the validity of these reforms from an economic standpoint and the equitable nature of the transformations that have been undertaken.