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The Gender Pension Gap (GPG) shows much variation between the EU Member States. This report analyses the links between the GPG, aspects of pension systems and gender inequalities on the labour market in past decades.
The Gender Pension Gap (GPG) and the Gender Pension Coverage Gap (GPCG) are indicators of inequality between genders concerning pensions. This report discusses the extent and evolution of the GPG and GPCG in the EU countries. Also, these measures are evaluated as to their quality as indicators of gender inequality in old age, and proposals for possible improvements are made.
As part of the election budgetary costings and impact assessment, the PROMES projection model is used to calculate the fiscal impulse of policy measures within the public health domain. This Working Paper outlines the characteristics, structure and operation of the model. We illustrate the simulation possibilities of the model using the base case and some alternative scenarios.
This report shows that minimum regulations (minimum pensions and the minimumright per career year) and pension credits diminish pension inequality between men and women. If we assume that there are no minimum regulations, the pension gap would be 37% instead of 31%. If we assume that pension credits are not granted, the gap would be 43% instead of 31%. The pension credit part-time work with maintenance of pension rights, one specific type of pension credit, has a limited impact. Without this pension credit, the pension gap would increase with 0.4 percentage points.
The results of this report show that the average pension of women is lower than that of men: in december 2017 the average gross pension of women aged 65 and older was 1469 euros, compared to 1920 euros for men. The gender pension gap thus equals 24%. The fact that this gap is not higher can to an important extent be attributed to the existence of derived rights. Without derived rights the gap would be 50%.
For the projection of social sustainability indicators, the Federal Planning Bureau uses the dynamic microsimulation model MIDAS, which has recently undergone a major revision. In this working paper we report a projection up to 2070 of poverty risks and income inequality among the elderly, pensioners and the population under 65 years, in a scenario with current pension policies and projected demographic and socio-economic evolutions.
MIDAS, the dynamic microsimulation model that focuses on the social sustainability of pensions, has undergone a major revision in recent years to improve the validity of the projections. This Working Paper not only reports on this revision, but also describes some important new modules.
This report (written at the request of the limited Council of Ministers) examines the budgetary impact as well as the consequences for the pensions of men and women of the pension agreement of July 19th, 2022. This agreement contains three measures :
In the context of the significant increase in the number of beneficiaries of the health and disability insurance observed over the last 20 years in Belgium, we seek to develop an explanatory model for work incapacity and disability. On the basis of SILC data, we attempt to identify and prioritise the effects of different factors that may influence the probability of employees' transitions between socio-economic statutes, and in particular to and from primary incapacity and disability.
This Working Paper puts the policy choices made in the regional child benefit reforms into perspective. Using the microsimulation model EXPEDITION, the expected direct effects of these reforms on child benefit expenditure and income distribution are mapped out. Special attention is paid to the effects on the simulated poverty risk of (families with) children, as this was a shared concern during the reforms in the different regions.
The Ageing Working Group was established in December 1999 by the Economic Policy Committee of the European Council ECOFIN. This working group is responsible for producing common budgetary projections on age-related public expenditure items. Each Member State calculates its long-term pension expenditure based on common assumptions.
This report presents the Belgian pension projection 2019-2070 published in the “2021 Ageing Report”. These results will be used in the context of the “Fiscal Sustainability Report” of the European Commission that assesses the mid-term and long-term fiscal situation of Member states.
It should be noted that the demographic and macroeconomic assumptions in the public pension expenditure projection of Belgium for the AWG are different from those retained in the national projection of the Study Committee on Ageing, as well as the scope of pension definition.
In preparation of the 2018 Pension Adequacy Report by the European Commission and the Social Protection Committee, teams from Belgium, Sweden and Italy use their microsimulation models to simulate the possible developments of pension adequacy while taking into account the set of economic and demographic projections developed by the AWG. The results of this exercise complement the AWG simulations of pension expenditures in a context of demographic. The results described in detail in this report were summarised in section 5.1.2. of the 2018 Pension Adequacy Report.
This Working Paper presents, on the basis of information available until July 2016, a projection at unchanged policy until 2030 of the population at risk of poverty or social exclusion in Belgium, as defined in the framework of the Europe 2020 Strategy. This population should amount to 2.232 million people in 2018, or 418 000 more than the Europe 2020 target. By 2030, its share should shrink to 16.1%, still 5.6 percentage points higher than the goal resulting from the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Social protection for the costs of long‐term care (LTC) varies widely between countries, and to date there has been no systematic comparison of the experiences of people with LTC needs in different countries. In response to this information gap, the OECD and the European Commission (EC) have established a project to make quantitative comparisons of social protection for LTC in OECD and EU countries, using the typical cases approach. Social protection encompasses both cash benefits, conditional on long‐term care needs, and long‐term care services offered at no or subsidized cost to the user. A data collection questionnaire has been distributed. This report describes how the data for Belgium have been collected. The following schemes are taken into account: the allowance for the assistance of the elderly; the allowances for incontinence and for the chronically ill; the Flemish care insurance; the sickness and invalidity insurance for home nursing care and care in institutions; home care (not nursing care), regulated and subsidized by regional governments; and service vouchers. The data refer to the year 2015.
This rapport was drafted at request by the Strategic Cell of the Ministry of Pensions. The first part discusses the regulatory framework concerned with regularisation of higher education years in each pension scheme. The second part describes the importance of regularised periods of study in the different pension schemes. The data used in the second part were provided by the pension institutions (Federale Pensioendienst, RSVZ).
Since a couple of decades, the pension policy of member states is a focal point of attention on the European level. Securing financial sustainability by the AWG requires a prospective vision on ageing, labour market developments and social policy. But a sensible assessment of financial sustainability cannot do without taking into account the prospect ive development of pension adequacy. The SPC does this through prospective theoretical replacement rates and benefit ratios. However, prospective values of the key ISG indicators, such as the risk of poverty rate or the Gini are not available.
This Working Paper studies the financial and social sustainability of the Belgian social protection system. The results of this publication were presented at the 20st Congrès des économistes belges de langue française and published in the conference proceedings. Assuming no policy changes and against the background of population ageing, the long-term public finance projections highlight an important budgetary challenge. In that framework, this paper examines a number of pathways based on the three pillars of the European strategy as determined during the 2001 Stockholm summit. The budgetary strategy (pillar 1) of the Belgian stability programme in itself does not guarantee the long-term sustainability of public finance and should, therefore, be completed by reforms in support of economic growth (through employment or productivity, pillar 2) or reforms of the pension schemes (as part of pillar 3). The social consequences of the reforms which alter the generosity of the pension schemes should not be overlooked.
The Federal Planning Bureau has a long tradition in providing long-term projections focused on the evolution of social expenditure within an overall framework of public finance, using the MALTESE system of models. This outlook is based on different scenarios: demographic, socio-economic, macroeconomic and welfare adjustment. The purpose of this publication is to describe the methodology for the construction of the socio-economic and macroeconomic scenarios and to illustrate it by presenting the main results from the 2011 projection for the Annual Report of the Study Group on Ageing.
One of the main sections in the current draft of the 2011-2012 Interprofessional Agreement concerns the welfare adjustment of social benefits. This draft results from a long process and fits in with the law concerning the Solidarity Pact between the Generations, which established a structural mechanism at the end of 2005, linking social benefits to welfare evolution. This working paper ‘Welfare adjustment of social benefits’ describes the first stage of that process: estimating the disposable financial means for the welfare adjustment of social benefits for the period 2011-2012, to which the Federal Planning Bureau contributed. In the employees scheme these means amount to 233.8 million in 2011 and to 497.9 million in 2012, of which the draft of the Interprofessional Agreement proposes to utilize merely 60%. Furthermore, this paper offers an overview of Belgian social policy by portraying its main turning points on the one hand and analysing the evolution of the average amounts of the main social benefits since 1980 on the other. The outcome is marked with contrast: over the period 1980-2009 the relative standard of living globally improved for pensioners, as opposed to the unemployed and the disabled.
This report describes the organization of the Belgian long-term care system. It can be characterized as a mixed system with extensive public care provision and substantial support from informal care mainly within the family. While the current volume and quality of services appears to be adequate, the future increase in the number of dependent elderly persons over the next two decades as a result of demographic ageing can be expected to become a serious challenge, both in terms of required formal and informal care capacity and financially.
The long-term demographic projections have progressively raised concerns about the consequences of ageing population. To better understand those changes and measure their size,projections of social expenditure have been built and progressively refined. Confronted with a large budgetary cost of ageing in the long run, the Government’s alternative is: solve the problemwhen it comes up or try to anticipate the negative results and prevent them. Three ways are to be considered that are not mutually incompatible: reforming the social system in order to reduce the cost for the present and future generations, increasing the tax or contribution receipts by pushing up employment rates and the trend growth of GDP and saving now in the public sector to cover the increase of the future expenditure. The paper shows that, since the end of the nineties, a broad movement of reforms has taken place in the EU which involves this three-pronged strategy.
Federal Planning Bureau
