The Generosity of the Welfare State Towards the Elderly

Mathieu Lefebvre and Pierre Pestieau

Chapter 10 in The Distributional Effects of Government Spending and Taxation, 2006, pp 289-301 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Imagine a casual discussion involving three Eurocrats in a café on the Brussels Grand Place. They are attending a meeting on the ‘Future of Pensions in the EU’ and are talking about the generosity of pensions. Each one contends that his country is the most generous. The Belgian contends that his country is by far the most generous as it allows workers to retire as early as age 50 and that Belgium has the earliest effective age of retirement, that is, 57 years for men. The Italian disagrees with this view, as in his country the rate of replacement at age 65 is the highest, and that is the relevant measure of generosity. The third one, a Dutchman, completely disagrees with his two colleagues. ‘Generosity to whom?’ he says: ‘In my country, pensions reduce the poverty rate among the elderly more than in any other country and that is what matters.’

Keywords: Gross Domestic Product; Early Retirement; Pension System; Poverty Alleviation; Double Dividend (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
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Journal Article: The generosity of the welfare state towards the elderly (2006)
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DOI: 10.1057/9780230378605_10

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