State Pension Reform in a Public Choice Framework

Philip Booth

North American Actuarial Journal, 2013, vol. 17, issue 1, 82-97

Abstract: Social security systems for old age have been explicitly studied in a public choice framework for more than 30 years. They illustrate extremely well the problems of allocating economic resources through a system of voting. Despite actuarial interest in state pension systems and despite the actuarial calculations that are needed to understand long-term public choice trends, there is almost no reference to public choice economics in the actuarial pensions literature. It can be argued that pension systems currently provide some of the most significant threats to the long-term budget positions of developed countries, a point that was made in the Nobel Laureate lecture of Professor James Buchanan over 24 years ago. In this article, we look at the costs and benefits that will be faced by different groups of voters as a result of state pension reform in the United Kingdom. The results of this analysis suggest that a majority of the electorate will have a strong financial interest in opposing state pension reform except where reform involves raising retirement ages. These results are in accordance not just with theoretical work but with other empirical work and practical observations.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10920277.2013.774194 (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:uaajxx:v:17:y:2013:i:1:p:82-97

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/uaaj20

DOI: 10.1080/10920277.2013.774194

Access Statistics for this article

North American Actuarial Journal is currently edited by Kathryn Baker

More articles in North American Actuarial Journal from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().