| Title: |
Implicit Pension Debt and the Role of Public Pensions for Human Capital Accumulation: An Assessment for Germany |
| Authors: |
Martin Werding; Jel Code H |
| Contributors: |
The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives |
| Source: |
http://www.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/pie/stage1/Japanese/discussionpaper/dp2005/dp283/text.pdf. |
| Publication Year: |
2006 |
| Collection: |
CiteSeerX |
| Subject Terms: |
Public pensions; public debt; Germany; human capital; fertility |
| Description: |
Implicit pension debt involved in existing pay-as-you-go public pension schemes is nowadays seen as an important determinant of the long-term sustainability of gen-eral government finances. Explicit up-dated calculations regarding its size are how-ever largely lacking. The present paper takes up the lessons that emerge from the relevant literature and estimates the amount of implicit pension debt for the German Statutory Pension Scheme under the current legal framework as well as over the se-ries of reforms that have been enacted during the last fifteen years. It is demon-strated that, through these reforms, implicit liabilities have been reduced substan-tially but are nevertheless still sizeable. Even if future contribution rates are in-creased as prescribed by current rules, there will be a notable gap in the German public pension scheme’s total balance sheet. In the second part of the paper, it is also discussed that, by the way they are conventionally designed, unfunded pension schemes may have a negative impact on human capital accumulation and, hence, on future contributions. A proposal for how this source of potential intrinsic instability could be removed by redesigning the German public pension scheme is then sketched. |
| Document Type: |
text |
| File Description: |
application/pdf |
| Language: |
English |
| Relation: |
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.466.9002 |
| Availability: |
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.466.9002; http://www.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/pie/stage1/Japanese/discussionpaper/dp2005/dp283/text.pdf |
| Rights: |
Metadata may be used without restrictions as long as the oai identifier remains attached to it. |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.D811E9D |
| Database: |
BASE |