WELFARE STATE

European social insurance platform - The structure of social insurance in Europe (december 2005)
 Doawnload report  (861 Ko)


Social protection in Germany : is there a Growing Generational Inequity ?

(Horizons stratégiques, numero 5, july 2007)

The article focuses on institutionalized generational relations, i.e. anonymous relations, because social tensions rose in this area whereas personal generational relations got better during the last decades. It is shown that esp. in the German retirement policy decades of early retirement policy resulted non-intentionally in the mid 1990s in a major financial and legitimacy crisis that was characterised by rising generational inequity. Reforms during the last decade, in part inspired by a generational equity debate, resulted in effective measures countering the financial crisis. Generational imbalances within labor market law and more predictable reforms in pension system are still open for debate. This could be the beginning of a change of the guiding idea of social policy from security to flexicurity.

 Social protection in Germany (85 Ko)

The 2005 EPC projections  of age-related expenditure (2004-2050) for the EU-25 Member States: underlying assumptions and projection methodologies 

(EUROPEAN ECONOMY. Special Report. No. 4. 2005. Office for Official Publications of the EC. 230pp. Tables, Graphs, Bibliog. KC-AF-05-004-EN-C; ISBN 92-894-9042-X; ISSN 1684-033X.)

In 2003, the ECOFIN Council gave the Economic Policy Committee (EPC) a mandate to produce a new set of long-run budgetary projections for all twenty-five Member States covering pensions, health care, long-term care, education, unemployment transfers and, if possible, contributions to pensions/social security systems. This follows the projection exercises of 2001 and 2003. The age-related expenditure projections feed into a variety of policy debates at EU level. In particular, they are used in the annual assessment of the sustainability of public finances carried out as part of the Stability and Growth Pact; in the context of the Open-Method of Co-ordination on pensions; and the analysis on the impact of ageing populations on the labour market and potential growth which will be relevant for the Lisbon strategy and Broad Economic Policy Guidelines.

This report provides a description of underlying assumptions, projection methodologies and background analysis of the age-related expenditure projections. Final results will be calculated on the basis the described methodology and will be presented to the Ecofin Council in February 2006.