Publication: The Latvian NDC Scheme: Success Under a Decreasing Labor Force
Loading...
Published
2019-04
ISSN
Date
2019-05-07
Author(s)
Stabina, Sandra
Editor(s)
Abstract
Latvia introduced a nonfinancial defined contribution (NDC) scheme in 1996 as it transitioned to a market economy. Despite a 20 percent decline in the working-age population from 1994–2016, the ratio of contributors to old-age pensioners rose from 1.6 to 2.1 given a steady increase in formal labor force participation and 5-6 percent real per capita wage growth. Projections show that long-term financial balance will be maintained through 2070, despite the threat of a projected 50 percent decline in the working-age population. Budgeted reserves will cushion the continued transition into a two-pillar public pension scheme. Latvia’s most important long-term policy challenge is to create the domestic investments and economic growth to reward younger workers for remaining in the country.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Stabina, Sandra; Palmer, Edward. 2019. The Latvian NDC Scheme: Success Under a Decreasing Labor Force. Social Protection and Jobs Discussion Paper,no. 1902;. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31648 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Harnessing a Young Nation’s Demographic Dividends through a Universal NDC Pension Scheme(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-04)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.Publication The Swedish NDC Scheme(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-04)Sweden’s reform began with a published sketch in 1992 and developed into nonfinancial defined contribution (NDC) legislation in 1994. This paper discusses the underpinnings of the Swedish NDC scheme’s financial stability, factors influencing the adequacy of benefits, and its interplay with other components of the pension system: the public financial defined contribution scheme, the minimum pension guarantee, and the occupational schemes. The paper also includes information on the December 2017 broad six-party political agreement on forthcoming legislation. It concludes with recommendations for additional improvements in the overall old-age pension system, based on the analysis of financial stability, adequacy, and differences in outcomes, and the interaction of the NDC scheme with the guarantee benefits and the occupational schemes.Publication Nonfinancial Defined Contribution Pension Schemes in a Changing Pension World : Volume 1. Progress, Lessons, and Implementation(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012)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.Publication Pension Reform : Issues and Prospects for Non-Financial Defined Contribution Schemes(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006)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.Publication NDC(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-04)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.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Report on the Treatment of the Insolvency of Natural Persons(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-01)This report addresses the insolvency of natural persons following this structure: a first part introduces the objectives and nature of the report, deals with general issues, and describes the foundations of a system for the treatment of the insolvency of natural persons. The second part of the report analyzes the core legal attributes of system for the treatment of the insolvency of natural persons: within this system, the most relevant questions are analyzed in depth, namely the design of the system and the institutional framework, access to the system, the participation of creditors, the solutions to the insolvency process, and discharge. The main objective of this report is to provide guidance on the characteristics of an effective insolvency regime for natural persons and on the opportunities and challenges encountered in the development of such a regime. In this regard, the report raises awareness about the importance of a regime for the treatment of the insolvency of natural persons, and explores the advantages and disadvantages of the solutions to the numerous practical issues that have to be confronted in the design of an insolvency regime for natural persons.Publication Taxes, Spending, and Equity: International Patterns and Lessons for Developing Countries(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-17)Taxes and public spending underpin the basic administration of government and finance the human capital and infrastructure investments needed for economic growth. They can also have a significant and immediate impact on poverty and inequality. The question of how public finance can support longer-term growth objectives while promoting equity has become even more important in recent years, given the high fiscal deficits and debt levels most countries emerged with in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These included the increasing cost of debt and the need to restart environmentally sustainable growth while helping households address the learning losses and other social scars caused by the pandemic. This paper examines the global evidence on which households pay which taxes and who benefits from what spending, and critically, the net effect on different households across the income distribution. The aim is to identify the patterns and lessons that emerge for designing progressive fiscal policies. A global dataset of 96 countries is assembled, spanning all regions of the world and all national income levels, grounded in the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) approach to fiscal incidence.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Latvia - From Exuberance to Prudence : A Public Expenditure Review of Government Administration and the Social Sectors - Overview and Summary(World Bank, 2010-09-27)This public expenditure review (PER) was conducted at the request of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) on behalf of the Government of the Republic of Latvia. The objective of the PER is to identify potential areas of further budget savings in public administration and the social sectors that could help restore fiscal balance, speed Latvia's recovery from the current crisis, and help it to meet the Maastricht Criteria by 2012 so it can adopt the Euro in 2014. The remainder of this volume is structured in the following way. Section two recounts the events and circumstances that set the Government's fiscal stance in the years prior to the crisis. Section three summarizes the principal emergency measures the Government took to cope during 2008 and 2009 as the crisis broke and led to Latvia's severe economic contraction. The purpose of these sections which draw liberally from material prepared by the financial authorities, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central (EC) is to make the case for further fiscal adjustment plain. The report then summarizes the main messages and highlights the most important suggestions made in each of the longer, more detailed chapters of volume two of the review. Each section is followed by a matrix of the options presented for the Government to take into consideration. Given the important role that municipalities and republican cities play in the delivery of social services, the chapter three of volume two provides an in depth examination of local government finances and spending. Local authorities (municipalities and republican cities) play such a prominent role in the delivery of public services particularly social services that a close look at the character of their spending is critical.Publication Nonfinancial Defined Contribution Pension Schemes in a Changing Pension World : Volume 1. Progress, Lessons, and Implementation(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012)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.