2020, Holzmann, Robert, Palmer, Edward, Sacchi, Stefano

This is the third publication to analyze progress, challenges, and adjustment options of this . reform revolution for mandated public pension schemes. The individual account-based but unfunded approach that promises fair and financially sustainable benefits is a reform benchmark for all pension schemes. Nonfinancial defined contribution (NDC) schemes originated in the 1990s independently in Italy and Sweden, were then adopted by Latvia, Poland, and Norway, envisaged but not implemented in various other countries (such as Egypt and Russia), and remain under discussion in many countries across the world (such as China and France). In its complete form, the approach also comprises budget-financed basic income provisions and mandated or voluntary funded provisions. Volume 1 offers an assessment of early reform countries before addressing key aspects of policy implementation and design review, including: how to best combine basic income provisions with NDC; how to deal with heterogeneity in longevity; and how to adjust NDC design and labor market policies to deliver on reform expectations. Volume 2 addresses a second set of important issues, including: the gender pension gap and what family policies can do within the NDC frame; the administrative challenges of NDCs and how countries are coping; the role of communication in NDCs; and the complexity of cross-border pension taxation, and much more.

2019-04, Klerby, Anna, Larsson, Bo, Palmer, Edward

Sweden’s gender pension gap is about 33 percent at retirement, reflecting the gender earnings gap – itself a reflection of a structural gender difference in low-pay jobs for women and men and career advancement opportunities. The individual nonfinancial defined contribution (NDC) account data examined show that the allocation of time to informal care work in the home versus formal market work is the main determinant of the gaps. A case is presented for sharing accounts as the default, making the cost of women’s time in home care explicit and negotiable, reducing the minimum guarantee pension’s role as an implicit tax-financed spousal subsidy. The paper also analyzes the likelihood of needing a guarantee and the effect of sharing under various circumstances.

2019-04, Góra, Marek, Palmer, Edward

This paper defines a universal public pension scheme (UPPS) as a government mandated lifecycle longevity insurance scheme that transfers individual consumption from the working years to retirement. It discusses the differences in four UPPS designs designated as either defined contribution (DC) or defined benefit (DB), and financial or nonfinancial. With individual DC accounts, the ball is in the individual’s court. The transparent link between contributions and retirement income is the enabler of efficiency that through marginal decisions to choose formal work over informal work or leisure and to postpone retirement marginally toward the end of the working life, supports affordability and sustainability for a chosen level of adequacy. Hence, UPPS-DC designs are found superior to UPPS-DB designs.

2006, Holzmann, Robert, Palmer, Edward

The previous decade has been one of pension reform throughout the world. In high income countries, the driving force has been the threat that current systems will become unaffordable in coming decades, with demographic developments presenting a major risk. In another setting, countries in the process of transition from a command, to a market economy are confronted with the challenge of introducing a public pension system that will provide social security in old age, but that also supports the fundamentals of a market economy. In the latter sense, it is important to examine carefully the experiences of developed market economies. Even in these countries, the driving force behind reform is demographic change and affordability. In a third setting, middle and lower-middle income countries are faced with the question of what system will best serve the interests of their specific country goals for the future. In all of these settings "NDC"-non-financial defined contribution-pension schemes have been on the agenda in discussions of possible options. Sweden is one of the few countries to have implemented an NDC scheme in the 1990s, when NDC came into its own as a concept, implemented in four European Union (EU) countries (Italy, Latvia, and Poland are the other three). NDC has become a reform option considered by many countries, understandably since most of Europe has a pay-as-you-go tradition, and NDC constitutes a new way to "organize" a mandatory, universal pay-as-you-go pension system. With some experience of NDC schemes implemented, it is felt particularly relevant for Sweden to host a conference devoted to discussing both the conceptual and institutional aspects of NDC. The goal was even more ambitious, however: to contribute to creating a synthesis of current knowledge on this new topic. This book is the realization of that goal. It comprises discussion papers on the status of NDC, its concept and the reform strategies that follow. Papers also discuss the conceptual issues of design and implementation , lessons from countries with NDC contribution schemes, and finalizes on the potential of NDC contribution schemes in other countries' reforms.

2020, Holzmann, Robert, Palmer, Edward, Sacchi, Stefano

This is the third publication to analyze progress, challenges, and adjustment options of this reform revolution for mandated public pension schemes. The individual account-based but unfunded approach that promises fair and financially sustainable benefits is a reform benchmark for all pension schemes. Nonfinancial defined contribution (NDC) schemes originated in the 1990s independently in Italy and Sweden, were then adopted by Latvia, Poland, and Norway, envisaged but not implemented in various other countries (such as Egypt and Russia), and remain under discussion in many countries across the world (such as China and France). In its complete form, the approach also comprises budget-financed basic income provisions and mandated or voluntary funded provisions. Volume 1 offers an assessment of early reform countries before addressing key aspects of policy implementation and design review, including: how to best combine basic income provisions with NDC; how to deal with heterogeneity in longevity; and how to adjust NDC design and labor market policies to deliver on reform expectations. Volume 2 addresses a second set of important issues, including: the gender pension gap and what family policies can do within the NDC frame; the administrative challenges of NDCs and how countries are coping; the role of communication in NDCs; and the complexity of cross-border pension taxation, and much more.

2019-04, Larsson, Bo, Leyaro, Vincent, Palmer, Edward

About one-half of Africa’s population will remain below age 30 well past 2050,with relatively few aged 60 and older. Using Tanzania’s projected demographics and presenteconomic point of departure, this paper demonstrates how the implicit “double”demographic dividend can be harnessed to create inclusive growth. A Swedish-style non financial defined contribution (NDC) system is launched where the government can borrow funds from the future through NDC “consol” bonds to transform individual savings into human and physical capital to promote inclusive economic growth. The consol bonds constitute a reserve to cover pensions of the retiring “demographic bubble” in the future as the dependency ratio gradually glides into demographic equilibrium. Minimum transfers tothe current elderly are also introduced with the phase-in.

2012, Holzmann, Robert, Palmer, Edward, Robalino, David

Pensions and social insurance programs are an integral part of any social protection system. Their dual objectives are to prevent a sharp decline in income and protect against poverty resulting from old age, disability, or death. The critical role of pensions for protection, prevention, and promotion was reiterated and expanded in the new World Bank 2012-2022 social protection strategy. This new strategy reviews the success and challenges of the past decade or more, during which time the World Bank became a main player in the area of pensions. But more importantly, the strategy takes the three key objectives for pensions under the World Bank's conceptual framework coverage, adequacy, and sustainability and asks how these objectives and the inevitable difficult balance between them can best be achieved. The ongoing focus on closing the coverage gap with social pensions and the new outreach to explore the role of matching contributions to address coverage and/or adequacy is part of this strategy. This comprehensive anthology on nonfinancial defined contribution (NDC) pension schemes is part and parcel of the effort to explore and document the working of this new system or reform option and its ability to balance these three key objectives. This innovative, unfunded individual accounts scheme provides a promising option at a time when the world seems locked into a stalemate between piecemeal reform of ailing traditional defined benefit plans or their replacement with prefunded financial account schemes. The current financial crisis, with its focus on sovereign debt, has enhanced the attraction of NDC as a pension scheme that aims for intra and intergenerational fairness, offers a transparent framework to distribute economic and demographic risks, and, if well designed, promises long-term financial stability. Supplemented with a basic minimum pension guarantee, explicit noncontributory rights, and a funded pillar, the NDC approach provides an efficient framework for addressing poverty and risk diversification concerns.

2013, Holzmann, Robert, Palmer, Edward, Robalino, David, Holzmann, Robert, Palmer, Palmer, Robalino, David

The concept of nonfinancial (notional) defined contribution (NDC) was born in the early 1990s and implemented from the mid-1990s in a number of countries. This innovative unfunded individual account scheme emerged and created high hopes at a time when the world seemed to have been locked into a stalemate between making piecemeal reforms of ailing traditional pay- as-you-go defined benefit schemes and introducing prefunded financial account schemes. Nonfinancial (notional) defined contribution (NDC) plans are designed to eliminate the work disincentives and nontransparent redistributions of defined benefit (DB) social security schemes without the transition costs and risk shifting that occurs in the context of a switch to a funded defined contribution (DC) scheme. To a large extent, they sweep away the special privileges that, intentionally or inadvertently, accrue to various groups in traditional schemes and pay everyone in accordance with his or her own contributions. However, not surprisingly, these new provisions will have different effects on diverse population subgroups, including men and women. Most of the effects do not stem from explicit gender-specific provisions in the plans, but rather from the interaction of gender-free policies with differing demographic and employment characteristics of men and women. The same policies affect the two genders differently because of the more limited labor force attachment of women as a result of their childbearing and childrearing roles, their lower earnings when they do work, their longer life expectancy, and the likelihood that they will eventually become widows and live alone in very old age. Both financial defined contribution (FDC) and NDC plans make certain design choices explicit that are implicit in DB plans. Although this feature allows for more informed decision making, it can also be politically sensitive and divisive. In some cases, the decision process is simpler for NDC plans than for FDC plans. NDC plans do not have individual investments and, therefore, do not have the problems that FDCs face and that stem from decentralized investment decisions.

2019-04, de Gosson de Varennes, Yuwei Zhao, Palmer, Edward

This paper identifies and discusses four issues in creating annuities in (nonfinancial) defined contribution (NDC) schemes that are essential for systems’ financial stability and fair inter or intragenerational redistribution. The first issue is the choice between incorporating the rate of return into the annuity or into the exogenous indexation. The second issue is in choosing a projection method for life expectancy that produces systematically unbiased estimates. The third issue is at what age the projection of life expectancy is to be fixed over the remaining lifetime of the annuity. The final issue is the prevalence of socioeconomic heterogeneity within the insurance pool.

2008-10, Palmer, Edward

Far-reaching changes in the regulation of financial markets and the organization of public pensions in the 1980s and 1990s transformed the landscape for retirement products in Sweden. First, banking and insurance were extensively deregulated in the 1980s, while the securities markets experienced major expansion. Insurance received a large boost from the authorization of unit-linked products in the early 1990s. Second, the public pension system was reformed. Survivor benefits for widows were eliminated from the public pillar in the late 1980s, leading to a large increase in demand for term life insurance. The old defined benefit public pension system was replaced by a notional or nonfinancial defined contribution (NDC) scheme, while a funded defined contribution (FDC) component was also created in the public pillar. The four occupational pension funds that cover the majority of Swedish workers were also converted into FDC schemes. This paper reviews the implications of these changes for the Swedish annuity market. It discusses the regulation of payout options in Sweden, highlighting the compulsory use of life annuities in the public pillar and the preference for term annuities in the occupational funds. It examines the performance of providers of retirement products, including the PPM, and reviews the increasing focus on risk-based regulation and supervision. The paper also emphasizes Sweden's success in moving in the direction of increased funding and privatization of old age insurance, while maintaining its basic character as a highly developed welfare state.