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Demographic challenges and structural imbalances in Ukraine’s solidarity-based pension system underscore the need to develop alternative mechanisms for providing pensions to the population. The non-State pension insurance, as a component of a multi-tier pension architecture, requires conceptual reconsideration and modernization in line with European standards and national specifics. The aim of this study is to identify the key directions for transforming Ukraine’s non-State pension insurance system and to develop mechanisms for its optimization, ensuring long-term financial stability and social protection for citizens. The study is based on a comprehensive approach combining comparative analysis of global experience, statistical analysis of the development dynamics of the domestic market, and expert evaluation of regulatory initiatives. Priority directions for improvement have been identified, including: flexible models of accumulative insurance, diversification of pension fund investment instruments from a risk management perspective, enhancing the transparency of market participants, strengthening the corporate segment through the creation of incentivizing fiscal mechanisms, and digitalizing administration. The necessity of harmonizing national legislation with European Union directives on pension provision and implementing a deposit guarantee system has been substantiated. It is found that the systematic modernization of the non-State pension insurance requires synchronization of institutional, regulatory, and fiscal reforms, which will ensure the development of a competitive segment of the financial market and foster increased public trust in the non-State pension programs as a reliable tool for securing a decent standard of living in old age. The implementation of the proposed measures will provide a real opportunity to align the Ukrainian model of the non-State pension insurance with the best European practices and enhance its efficiency in the context of demographic transition.

In the wake of the financial crisis and Great Recession, the health of state and local pension plans has emerged as a front burner policy issue. Elected officials, academic experts, and the media alike have pointed to funding shortfalls with alarm, expressing concern that pension promises are unsustainable or will squeeze out other pressing government priorities. A few local governments have even filed for bankruptcy, with pensions cited as a major cause. Alicia H. Munnell draws on both her practical experience and her research to provide a broad perspective on the challenge of state and local pensions. She shows that the story is big and complicated and cannot be viewed through a narrow prism such as accounting methods or the role of unions. By examining the diversity of the public plan universe, Munnell debunks the notion that all plans are in trouble. In fact, she finds that while a few plans are basket cases, many are functioning reasonably well. Munnell's analysis concludes that the plans in serious trouble need a major overhaul. But even the relatively healthy plans face three challenges ahead: an excessive concentration of plan assets in equities; the risk that steep benefit cuts for new hires will harm workforce quality; and the constraints plans face in adjusting future benefits for current employees. Here, Munnell proposes solutions that preserve the main strengths of state and local pensions while promoting needed reforms.

Why has old-age security become less solidaristic and increasingly tied to risky capitalist markets? Drawing on rich archival data that covers more than fifty years of American history, Michael A. McCarthy argues that the critical driver was policymakers' reactions to capitalist crises and their political imperative to promote capitalist growth. Pension development has followed three paths of marketization in America since the New Deal, each distinct but converging: occupational pension plans were adopted as an alternative to real increases in Social Security benefits after World War II, private pension assets were then financialized and invested into the stock market, and, since the 1970s, traditional pension plans have come to be replaced with riskier 401(k) retirement plans. Comparing each episode of change,Dismantling Solidaritymounts a forceful challenge to common understandings of America's private pension system and offers an alternative political economy of the welfare state. McCarthy weaves together a theoretical framework that helps to explain pension marketization with structural mechanisms that push policymakers to intervene to promote capitalist growth and avoid capitalist crises and contingent historical factors that both drive them to intervene in the particular ways they do and shape how their interventions bear on welfare change. By emphasizing the capitalist context in which policymaking occurs, McCarthy turns our attention to the structural factors that drive policy change.Dismantling Solidarityis both theoretically and historically detailed and superbly argued, urging the reader to reconsider how capitalism itself constrains policymaking. It will be of interest to sociologists, political scientists, historians, and those curious about the relationship between capitalism and democracy. 0

This study explores the underlying drivers of US public pension funds’ tendency to tilt their portfolios towards companies with stronger corporate social responsibility (CSR). Studying the equity holdings of large, internally managed US state pension funds, we find evidence that the political leaning of their beneficiaries and political pressures by state politicians affect funds’ investment decisions. State pension funds from states with Democratic-leaning beneficiaries tilt their portfolios more strongly towards companies that perform well on CSR issues, and this tendency is intensified when the state government is dominated by Democratic state politicians. Moreover, we find that funds which tilt their portfolios towards companies with superior CSR scores generate a slightly higher return compared with their counterparts. Overall, our findings indicate that funds align their investment choices with the financial and non-financial interests of their beneficiaries when deciding whether to incorporate CSR into their equity allocations.

Non-state pension provision forms the third level of the national pension system and represents funded pension programs on a voluntary basis. Since the state pension system does not fully satisfy the needs of citizens of retirement age, non-state pension provision plays an important role for the growth of incomes of Ukrainian pensioners. However, today non-state pension provision is not quite popular among the population. The purpose of the article is to assess the state of non-state pension funds in Ukraine, to reveal their features and development priorities at the current stage of the pension reform. The composition of financial institutions involved in the implementation of private pension provision was determined, and the relationship between them was disclosed. The peculiarities of the activities and responsibilities of private pension funds were highlighted. The analysis of the main performance indicators of non-state pension funds was carried out. It was revealed that the non-state pension system failed to attract a large number of participants. Most of the existing participants are workers whose pension plans are financed by their employers, and they usually do not pay much attention to their own pension accounts or to the performance of the non-state pension fund. Employers pay more than 90 % of the total accumulated pension contributions, and the rest are paid by employees and private entrepreneurs. The financial instruments available for investment in Ukraine severely limit the possibility of obtaining investment income and risk diversification. As a result, non-state pension funds invest mainly in two types of financial instruments: government securities and bank deposits. It was determined that an important direction in the development of non-state pension provision is to facilitate the involvement of more insurance companies and banks in this area. It is necessary to create favorable legislative and tax conditions for their cooperation within the framework of the non-state pension system.

As the baby boom begins to withdraw from the labor force, ensuring a secure retirement income becomes an increasingly important issue, the number of people over age 65 is expected to double by 2030. That trend will continue, accompanied by worries about stock market volatility, corporate malfeasance, a rapidly changing economy, and the viability of Social Security. In Coming Up Short, two experts on retirement policy analyze 401(k) plans, the fastest-growing type of employer-sponsored pensions and a vital source of retirement income for the American middle class. Alicia Munnell and Annika Sunden chronicle the development of 401(k) plans, now the dominant form of private pensions. In accessible language, they explain how such plans work and discuss their popularity. For employees, these plans are appealing becuase they have more control over their own retirement funds, and the plans are portable. For employers, the plans are generally less costly than defined benefit plans. Despite those advantages, there are some significant downsides to 401(k) plans. These plans shift all the risk and responsibility to employees, who must decide whether to join, how much to contribute, how to invest, whether to \"cash out\" when changing jobs, and how to manage their nest egg in retirement. These are difficult decisions, and while in theory 401(k)s could be an effective savings vehicle for retirement, in practice many people make mistakes at every step along the way. Com ing Up Short discusses why these mistakes are made and proposes various reforms to ensure that the aging population will have adequate retirement income. Comprehensive and up-to-date, Coming Up Short is an essential resource on 401(k) plans for financial service professionals, policymakers, academics, and individuals planning for their own retirement.

This paper provides detailed empirical evidence on the saving behavior of Irish households using micro data from the 1994/95 and 1999/2000 Household Budget Surveys. I employ synthetic cohort techniques to characterize the life cycle profile of saving rates and to examine the response of household saving to house price appreciation. The analysis suggests that households at the peak of their working lives have relatively low savings though there is no evidence of a generational savings gap. Also, despite housing being a major component of Irish households, wealth, there is no strong relationship between savings and housing capital gains.

All countries in the former transition economies of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe have undertaken public pension reforms of varying depth and orientation, often with the support of the World Bank. Although the reformed public pension schemes provide broad benefit adequacy, in most cases additional measures are needed to achieve fiscal sustainability in an aging society. 'Adequacy of Retirement Income after Pension Reforms in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe: Eight Country Studies' assesses the benefit adequacy of the reformed pension systems for eight countries—Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia—to identify policy gaps and options. The authors identify the motivations for reform against the backdrop of the trend toward multi-pillar arrangements, document key provisions, and compare them in the context of the World Bank's five-pillar paradigm for pension reform. They then evaluate the sustainability and adequacy of reformed pension systems and provide recommendations to address gaps and take advantage of opportunities for further reforms. The case studies and summary suggest the following broad policy conclusions: • Fiscal sustainability has improved in most study countries, but few are fully prepared for the inevitability of population aging. • The linkage between contributions and benefits has been strengthened, and pension system designs are better suited to market conditions • Levels of income replacement are generally adequate for all but some categories of workers (including those with intermittent formal sector employment or low lifetime wages), and addressing their needs requires initiatives that go beyond pension policy. • Further reforms should focus on extending labor force participation by the elderly to avoid benefit cuts that could undermine adequacy and very high contribution rates that could discourage formal sector employment. • More decisive financial market reforms are needed for funded provisions to deliver on the expectations of participants and keep funded pensions safe. This book will be of interest to policy makers, researchers, and everyone interested in the topic of pensions in the region, and beyond.

This paper is aimed at revealing the social aspects of pension system modernization, associated with the need to identify and address the real social base of reforms, determine their level of social support, willingness of the population to accept and implement the proposed solutions to the problems of pension provision. The main research method of this problem is a sociological survey of the working population of Russia, which allows revealing the social conditions and the factors promoting or impeding the reform of the pension system. The article presents the main approaches to the modernization of the pension system in the context of studying social positions of employees of the leading Russian enterprises regarding different ways of the development of system of non-state pension provision (NSPPs). The authors describe the most popular forms of workers participation in corporate pension plans and justify the existing prospects of modernization of the pension system towards further development of NSPPs.