Search Results (5)

It is generally accepted that China’s Employees Basic Pension System (CEBPS) cannot cover its expenses. The government needs to fill the gap in income and expenditure with fiscal revenue to ensure sustainability of the system, which may cause it to take fiscal risk caused by the volatility of the fund gap. In this article, through the establishment of a prediction model for the income and expenditure of CEBPS with dynamic mortality, we aimed to measure the fiscal risk caused by longevity risk and provide policy basis for the government. We found that longevity risk leads to serious fiscal risk. The income and expenditure gap of CEBPS fluctuates greatly, and the 2.5% and 97.5% quantiles of fund balance in 2067 are 1.52 and 0.44 times the expected value, respectively. The knock-on effect of fiscal risk, measured by value-at-risk (VaR), is 1.15 times gross domestic product and 4.75 times state fiscal expenditure in 2020. In this article, we not only calculate the expected value like the other literatures but also discuss the volatility of the CEBPS fund gap. Full article

It is the focus of social security system reform at this stage in China to promote the transition of basic endowment insurance for urban employees from provincial overall planning level to national overall planning level, which is of great significance to the realization of fair and efficient of economic development. Based on the micro data of China Household Finance Survey 2017 (CHFS2017), this paper first establishes a personal wage prediction model to estimate the distribution of personal lifetime wage income, then designs two pension collection and payment plans of “direct national overall planning” and “indirect national overall planning”, and establishes an actuarial model of pension to calculate the present value of personal lifetime contribution, lifetime claim and lifetime real wage income after pension adjustment under different overall planning levels. Finally, the income gap index and net benefit rate index are used to measure the change of the whole income gap and the transfer of pension benefits. The results show that on the whole, the basic endowment insurance for urban employees does have a significant income redistribution effect, and its income adjustment effect is positively related to the overall planning level and intensity of the system. Under the current provincial overall planning level, the income redistribution effects of the system are as follows: the high-income group transfers to the low-income group, the young generation to the elderly generation, the female insured person to the male insured person, and the non-state-owned economic unit to the state-owned economic unit. With the improvement of the overall planning level and strengthening of intensity, there are differences in the changes of benefits among different groups. Full article

There is no consensus on the judgment of the adequacy status of the old-age pension benefit in China at present. Therefore, clarification of various types of indicators and benchmarks of pension adequacy is urgently needed. According to the theoretical development of pension adequacy, this paper offers a comprehensive analysis of the benefit level of basic pension from the perspectives of poverty alleviation, income substitution, and financial sustainability. The calculation results based on local administrative data show that the current pension benefit in urban China is unbalanced: on the one hand, the average pension level of self and flexible employees cannot keep track of the local average consumption level or even the relative poverty standard in particular years and the individual replacement rates for a few nonstandard employees are less than the minimum standard of 40% set by the International Labor Organization, which means the pension benefit performs poorly in terms of consumption smoothing. On the other hand, the lifelong pension rights are much higher than the lifelong contribution obligations for new retirees. Under the trend of population ageing, the extremely high benefit–cost ratio means that the current retired generation is eroding the welfare of the current working generations, and the long-term financial sustainability of the pension system is facing challenges. In the future, in order to improve the benefit level of the basic old-age pension system in a sustainable way, we need to increase the average and individual replacement rates and reduce the benefit–cost ratio by consolidating contribution bases and delaying the number of contribution years. Full article

With the aim of probing into the life satisfaction of retired urban elderly in China with respect to old age support systems, this study examines the effect of pension reform with its existing inequalities across demographic and social groups on the life satisfaction of retired urban residents. The complementary role of intergenerational assistance and self-support on the life satisfaction of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the pension scheme was analyzed using an ordered logit regression model with 2015 national representative data from China’s Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey. Our sample consists of a cross-sectional data set of 3815 retired urban elderly aged 60 and above. The empirical results depict that though enjoying benefits from the public pension scheme generally enhances life satisfaction, beneficiaries of the Government and Institution Pension and Enterprise Employee Basic Pension are more advantaged than beneficiaries under the Urban-Rural Social Pension Scheme. The pension inequalities existing at provincial levels and across social groups such as gender and residence registration status also affect life satisfaction adversely. Women and rural ‘Hukou’ registered retired urban residents are at an apparent disadvantage. Getting financial and emotional support from children broadly improves life satisfaction. Non-beneficiaries of the public pension benefit more from the financial support of children than public pension beneficiaries. There is also a positive effect of cohabiting with children on life satisfaction when retired urban residents are single as compared to being married. Financial and physical self-support ability in forms of good health, home ownership and wealth management enhance life satisfaction significantly. However, largely, retired urban elderly have a higher life satisfaction when they are financially independent of children and are supported by state pension schemes. Our findings indicate that self-support ability of the elderly together with pension benefits are more effective in enhancing the life satisfaction of retired urban elderly in China. It is recommended that government institute policies to promote personal finance initiatives by the elderly while improving the pension scheme and reducing pension inequality. Full article

Against the background of population aging and economic downturn, the sustainability of pension systems has aroused great concern for governments across the world. To better reflect the pressure of pension payments in the changing context, the paper aims to forecast the annual pension gap of the public pension system for urban employees in China. By the use of Cohort-component population projections and stochastic projection models, the distribution of flow-based annual pension gap in the next fifty years are estimated under basic assumptions. The results show that the pension gap continues to exist from 2017 and keeps expanding until 2070 without any policy reform. Sensitivity analyses of demographics and various combinations of policy parameters on the distribution of future pension gaps are displayed. Wider pension coverage with lower policy threshold is more likely to face larger long-term pension gap. Full article