Indicators for Measuring Intergenerational Fairness of Social Security Systems—The Case of the German Social Health Insurance

The issue of fiscal sustainability is often labelled as a synonym for intergenerational fairness; however, pay-as-you-go schemes such as the German Social Health Insurance (SHI) involve a “natural” amount of intergenerational redistribution from younger net payers to older net beneficiaries. We calculate intertemporal balance sheets of SHI and compare two generational accounting approaches (GAC and GAIB) with an alternative measure of intergenerational fairness, SM, which we derive from Settergren and Mikula (2005). Our results indicate that the SM concept leads to similar implications concerning the amount of intergenerational redistribution as classical measures of fiscal sustainability. For the SM approach, the balance sheet of SHI shows a rate of unfunded benefits of 25 percent. Closing this gap requires an increase of the contribution rate by 30 to 40 percent. This total effect can be separated into an effect due to the current population structure (10 p.p.), the increase in life expectancy (10 p.p.), and medical technical progress (about 10 to 20 p.p.).

The Political Economy of Municipal Pension Funding

Many US municipalities have committed to pay retirement benefits to public sector employees but have not saved enough to fulfill these obligations. This paper studies the determinants of municipal pension funding and its implications for intergenerational redistribution using an overlapping generations model. Under perfect capital markets, pension funding choices are fully capitalized into land prices. This neutrality result fails if agents face a binding downpayment constraint in the land market: old agents prefer a pay-as-you go system, while young agents find a fully funded system optimal. Empirical evidence based on cross-city comparisons of pension liabilities is consistent with these predictions. (JEL H72, H75, J32, J45)

Intragenerational redistribution in a funded pension system

In a general equilibrium framework, this paper studies the properties, in terms of labour market distortions and capital accumulation, of three social security systems: a pay-as-you-go notional defined contribution (PAYG NDC), a fully funded (FF), and a novel modified FF (MFF) system, which includes an intragenerational redistributive component to guarantee minimum living standards to future low-income retirees. We show that while PAYG NDC depresses labour supply and physical capital accumulation, FF is neutral on both dimensions. Conversely, MFF slightly increases physical capital accumulation, without significantly reducing labour supply incentives. Moreover, it reduces the burden of future intergenerational redistribution, and increases social welfare.

The Effect of Oil Revenue Funds on Social Welfare

Recently, it has become popular among oil-producing countries to establish oil revenue funds, which are believed to stabilize the economy and provide intergenerational redistribution. Oil revenue funds differ depending on rules, such as accumulation rules and withdrawal rules. Numerical simulations show that funds can improve intergenerational social welfare, though not always. Which rule yields the highest intergenerational social welfare depends on countries’ parameters such as gross interest rate, relative risk aversion, and growth rate of oil production. Some rules may be unaffordable for a government budget. If oil production does not decline, funds following expenditure-based accumulation rules yield higher social welfare than funds that follow other rules. If oil production declines, the permanent oil income model or “Bird-in-Hand” can yield the highest social welfare.