Longevity Variations and the Welfare State

Pierre Pestieau and Gregory Ponthiere

No 2015027, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: Life expectancy at birth has more than doubled in Europe since the early 19th century. This demographic trend constitutes a major victory against scarcity, but raises also deep challenges to the Welfare State, concerning the sustainability and the equity of the social security system. This paper surveys recent developments in the economic analysis of longevity, both at the positive and the normative levels. Taking mortality risks into account is shown to affect the study of the lifecycle model significantly, in particular concerning the strength of life horizon effects. It raises also, at the level of normative foundations for policy-making, a dilemma between ex ante and ex post valuations. Finally, we explore the design of policy reforms under varying longevity, in fields including preventive and curative policies, education, pension, and wealth taxation.

Keywords: longevity; mortality risk; inequalities; life cycle; Welfare State (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H55 J10 J18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-06-16
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://sites.uclouvain.be/core/publications/coredp/coredp2015.html (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Longevity Variations and the Welfare State (2016)
Journal Article: LONGEVITY VARIATIONS AND THE WELFARE STATE (2016)
Working Paper: Longevity variations and the welfare state (2016)
Working Paper: Longevity variations and the welfare state (2016)
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:cor:louvco:2015027

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) Voie du Roman Pays 34, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alain GILLIS ().