Fiscal and Welfare Effects of Balanced-budget Reforms of Korea’s National Pension System

Kyung-woo Lee and Younghun Shim

Global Economic Review, 2018, vol. 47, issue 4, 367-394

Abstract: This paper evaluates the fiscal sustainability of the benchmark pension system in Korea, which will come into effect in 2028 following the 2007 pension reforms, and the welfare effects of pension reforms aimed at a balanced budget over the life cycle. To this end, we measure the lifetime pension deficit, i.e. the difference between total pension benefits and total pension contributions in an individual’s lifetime. We find that the benchmark pension system is expected to run an average lifetime deficit of 22.36 million won (approximately $22,360), and the current pension fund is unlikely to finance the sum of future deficits. The optimal pension reform for the zero average lifetime deficit reduces social welfare by as much as a 2.06% fall in consumption and is characterised with the contribution rate of 20.3% and an average replacement rate of 66.4%. These values are much higher than the respective benchmark values, 9% and 40%, because the increase in pension benefits, combined with the increase in pension contributions, can reduce the income inequality due to the progressivity of pension benefits and the proportionality of pension contributions.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1226508X.2018.1507753 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:glecrv:v:47:y:2018:i:4:p:367-394

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RGER20

DOI: 10.1080/1226508X.2018.1507753

Access Statistics for this article

Global Economic Review is currently edited by Kap-Young Jeong and Taeyoon Sung

More articles in Global Economic Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().