Explore the vast range of titles available.

We establish 16 good practice principles for modelling defined contribution pension plans. These principles cover the following issues: model specification and calibration; modelling quantifiable uncertainty; modelling member choices; modelling member characteristics, such as occupation and gender; modelling plan charges; modelling longevity risk; modelling the post-retirement period; integrating the pre- and post-retirement periods; modelling additional sources of income, such as the state pension and equity release; modelling extraneous factors, such as unemployment risk, activity rates, taxes and welfare entitlements; scenario analysis and stress testing; periodic updating of the model and changing assumptions; and overall fitness for purpose.

In recent decades, many European governments have passed pension reforms to incentivise participation in private pension plans. However, we still have minimal understanding of whether participation in such plans is concentrated in certain groups or spread uniformly across society, or what their stability over time is. To illuminate the social selectivity of these plans and potential changes in that selectivity over time, we analyse six waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) in ten European countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Specifically, we focus on participation gaps in individual and occupational plans of workers across six dimensions: gender, education, age, social class, income, and risk preference. The results indicate large and persistent social divides in participation rates. As expected, rates are significantly higher among workers who are not close to retirement, those with an upper service occupation and those with high income. Importantly, these divides did not shrink significantly over the period considered – 2006 to 2021. Social selectivity is not consistently smaller in contexts of more mature private pension provision, whereas it is consistently smaller in countries with more generous public pensions.

Austerity measures on services provision, introduced due to recent economic crises, have stimulated the search for innovative welfare solutions, including options that are not directly or entirely funded by public sources. In Italy, recent legislation has promoted the development of occupational welfare (OW) measures, aimed at strengthening the supply of services to support employees with informal (elder) care responsibilities. This paper aims to describe how the newly introduced OW schemes might innovate existing care arrangements, by identifying their impact on the different actors involved in home care provision (care recipients, family carers, home care service providers and migrant care workers), as well as at a macro level in terms of promoting social innovation. The international relevance of the Italian case comes from the fact that it is one of the more representative familistic care regimes, largely characterized by home care provided by informal carers and migrant care workers (MCW). The importance of Italian OW schemes is increasing, and in 2018 their presence in company-level bargaining agreements grew by more than 15%. A rapid review of the literature and expert interviews allowed us to describe the complex Italian OW schemes system, and to identify the positive implications of their application for the country’s long-term care (LTC) context, underlining what makes these measures a clear example of “social innovation” likely to have a future positive impact on home-based care in Italy.

p class=\"MsoNormal\"The legal institution of trust, as developed and utilised within the law of equity and trust in England, played an important role in social and financial spheres where the common law (and civil law systems) could not provide a flexible, efficient framework for protection of the interest of third parties (beneficiaries). Trust played a pivotal role in financial service globally, including investment and pension funds. However, rapid technological developments are also significantly impacting financial services in terms of making the intermediaries surplus. This article delves into the potential displacement of conventional trust schemes, which play a central role in governing pension funds in the UK, by emerging technologies. After having examined the structure and regulation of UK occupational pension schemes, focusing on pension trusts, the article first assesses the impact of new technologies on pension funds to understand if these technologies can achieve the same advantages carried out by trust in the management of such funds; secondly, the article highlights a possible use of such new technologies on pension trust, emphasising in any case the need for a balanced approach between technological advancements and the structure of pension trust. Additionally, the article explores the application of this approach to the management of Italian pension funds, offering a comparative perspective.o:p/o:p

We analyze the newly introduced German occupational pension scheme called target pension (“Zielrente”), which links the beneficiaries’ benefits during the retirement phase to the mortality experienced among the pension beneficiaries and the performance of the financial market, from a pension beneficiary’s perspective. We model the contract payoffs related to the target pension according to the new enhancement law on German occupational law. Specifically, we include two parameters in the plan design, one to control the surplus participation and one to control the loss participation. These parameters are chosen in such a way that the initial wealth of the retiree equals the initial value of the target pension. With the help of expected lifetime utility and wealth equivalent, we find that the target pension provides a meaningful supplement to the first and third pillar. Further, we find some comparative advantages of the target pension over the traditional pure defined benefit and some defined contribution plans from a policyholder’s point of view. Our analysis with reasonable parameter choices shows that target pension plans can be outperformed by defined contribution plans with variable annuities, while the latter are accompanied by a considerably higher ruin probability.

China is at a critical juncture in its economic transition. A comprehensive reform of its pension and social security systems is an essential element of a strategy aimed toward achieving a harmonious society and sustainable development. Among policy makers, a widely held view is that the approach to pension provision and reform efforts piloted over the last 10-15 years is insufficient to enable China's economy and population to realize its development objectives in the years ahead. This volume suggests a national pension system that no longer distinguishes along urban and rural locational or hukou lines yet takes account of the diverse nature of employment relations and capacity of individuals to make contributions. This volume is organized as follows: the main text outlines this vision, focusing on summarizing the key features of a proposed long-term pension system. It first examines key trends motivating the need for reform then outlines the proposed three-pillar design and the rationale behind the design choices. It then moves on to examine financing options. The text continues by discussing institutional reform issues, and the final section concludes. The six appendixes provide additional analytical detail supporting the findings in the main text. The pension system design can play an important role in supporting or constraining such economic and demographic transitions: 1) fragmentation and lack of portability of rights hinder labor market efficiency and contribute to coverage gaps; 2) multiple schemes for salaried workers, civil servants, and, in some areas, migrants similarly impact labor markets; 3) legacy costs that are largely financed through current pension contributions weaken incentives for compliance and accurate wage reporting; 4) very limited risk pooling and interurban resource transfers limit the insurance function of the urban pension system and create spatial disparities in old-age income protection; 5) low retirement ages affect incentives and benefits and undermine fiscal sustainability; and 6) relatively low returns on individual accounts result in replacement rates significantly less than anticipated while at the macro level, are likely to inhibit wider efforts to stimulate higher domestic consumption.

This accessible work provides a ‘political sociology’ of welfare states in industrial societies, with both historical and contemporary perspectives. Ellison focuses on the social and political underpinnings of a number of welfare regimes and looks at the transformations they have undergone and the challenges they face. This book assesses current debates about the role of ‘globalization’ in welfare state change, paying particular attention to contemporary views about the capacity of embedded institutional structures to limit the effects of global economic pressures. Ellison assesses the changing nature of social policies in nine OECD countries – selected to include ‘liberal, ‘social democratic’ and ‘continental’ welfare regimes. Taking labour market and pension policies as the main areas of investigation, this volume provides ‘snapshots’ of welfare reform in each case, charting the ways in which different regimes ‘manage’ the range of challenges with which they are confronted. Ultimately, the book suggests that all contemporary welfare regimes are experiencing a level of ‘neoliberal drift’. As yet, this trend towards liberalization remains constrained in those countries with more ‘coordinated’ economies and institutionalized forms of social partnership – but the question is for how long? This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of International Politics, Sociology and Social Policy.

Aim/purpose - Occupational pension schemes are products which seem to create the opportunity for better retirement provision. In Poland, they have not gained a great popularity so far, but now, Polish pension system stands at the threshold of change as the draft law on occupational capital plans has been presented by government and delivered for public consultation. Therefore, the main goal of the study is to answer the question if this new form of occupational pension schemes is a chance for a stimulation of voluntary pension savings. Design/methodology/approach - The aim of the study has been realised by a critical analysis of current solutions applied in Poland as well as a comparative analysis of solutions applied in European countries, where occupational pension programmes have already succeeded. The paper is mainly of a theoretical and review nature. Findings - The identified opportunities and threats related to the draft law support the view that occupational capital plans can become a stimulus for a development of supplementary pension system, nevertheless, they still need some amendments. Therefore, some recommendations have been indicated in the work. Research implications/limitations - Chosen European countries are all characterised by a different social security model and they represent different pension welfare worlds, therefore, they cannot be treated as models which could be blindly copied (differing conditions of each country should be taken into account). Originality/value/contribution - Among many discussions on occupational capital plans based on political views, the work provides the reader with a content-related evaluation based on facts (previous Polish and foreign experience). It can contribute to the discussion on the development of voluntary pension schemes in Poland and other countries.

This paper analyzes the performance of the Bulgarian private defined contribution pensions in the second and third pillars of the pension system.