Towards the Financial Sustainability of Public Pension Insurance Systems

Abstract

The following study is composed of an introduction, three main parts (historical, logical and statistical) and conclusions. This structure allows the author to explain why the issue of the financial sustainability of pension insurance is a matter of crucial importance for public finance. In most countries the systems of old-age benefits for citizens is based on the pay-as-you-go model of pension insurance from the nineteenth century. It is hard to explain why the scheme remains the core solution for the social security of citizens after they have reached retirement age. The management of resources is, as mentioned above, based on the pay-as-you-go scheme that was established over 130 years ago and is now viewed as archaic from an economic point of view. Any attempt to interfere with system solutions results in social dissatisfaction while creating further problems for public finances. At the same time, the failure to resolve these problems threatens to bankrupt pension insurance systems. In the worst-case scenario, it could actually result in the collapse of state budgets. These are the problems that inspired the author to conduct the study.