How Much is Transfer and How Much is Insurance in a Pay‐as‐you‐go System? The German Case

Axel Borsch‐Supan and Anette Reil‐Held

Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2001, vol. 103, issue 3, 505-524

Abstract: Pay‐as‐you‐go pension systems provide insurance against longevity‐related old‐age poverty and related risks. They are commonly also used as instruments for redistribution. This paper provides several estimates of the insurance and transfer share of the German public pension system. Estimating these shares is important because they are indicative of taxation‐related deadweight losses and influence public acceptance of the pension system. We also disentangle intragenerational from intergenerational transfers. Although our estimate of intragenerational transfers is smaller than recent semi‐official estimations, such transfers create substantial deadweight losses. Intergenerational transfers are much larger, thereby contributing to strong negative participation incentives for the younger generation. JEL classification: H55; J26

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (65)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9442.00257

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:bla:scandj:v:103:y:2001:i:3:p:505-524

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0347-0520

Access Statistics for this article

Scandinavian Journal of Economics is currently edited by Richard Friberg, Matti Liski and Kjetil Storesletten

More articles in Scandinavian Journal of Economics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().