The sustainability of pension schemes

Srichander Ramaswamy

No 368, BIS Working Papers from Bank for International Settlements

Abstract: Poor financial market returns and low long-term real interest rates in recent years have created challenges for the sponsors of defined benefit pension schemes. At the same time, lower payroll tax revenues in a period of high unemployment, and rising fiscal deficits in many advanced economies as economic activity has fallen, are also testing the sustainability of pay-as-you-go public pension schemes. Amendments to pension accounting rules that require corporations to regularly report the valuation differences between their defined benefit pension assets and plan liabilities on their balance sheet have made investors more aware of the pension risk exposure for the sponsors of such schemes. This paper sheds light on what effects these developments are having on the design of occupational pension schemes, and also provides some estimates for the post-employment benefits that could be delivered by these schemes under different sets of assumptions. The paper concludes by providing some policy perspectives.

Keywords: funds; service cost; contribution rates; mortality rates; long-term real interest rates; real wages; sovereign liabilities; pay-as-you-go schemes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2012-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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