Reinventando la Seguridad Socialhacia un sistema mixto de pensiones “por etapas”

Abstract

Economic literature has dealt with pensions for decades and there is substantive agreement about longevity being the cause of trouble with pensions. But, in our opinion, longevity is not a problem and thus should not be seen as the cause of the ‘pensions problem’. Sustainability and adequacy of pensions schemes have their major challenge in their lack of adaptation to the pervasive and continuous increase in longevity everywhere. This lack of adaptation has brought Social Security to forget the very reason that led to its “invention” more than one century ago: to insure against longevity after “grand age”. In this paper, we show how statutory retirement age in no way has been able to keep track with continuous increase in longevity. We also pay close attention to the actuarial balance of resources and needs through the lifecycle. Finally we advance (and empirically test) a proposal to create a “two-steps” mixed pension system. Such a system is structured in time through a first private DC capitalization pillar that intervenes since a chosen retirement age until the “grand age” providing pensioners with a term annuity and is replaced by a Social Security DC life pension (notional accounts) from that grand age on.