A Just Retirement Pension System: Beyond Neoliberalism

This article takes issue with the neoliberal conception of justice that has informed much of retirement pension policy in recent decades. Drawing upon an appraisal of a spectrum of liberal philosophical perspectives, it develops an evaluative framework that specifies the appropriate normative foundations of the design of retirement pension systems. We contend that justice is comprised of three core principles: need, which legitimates the social minimum that is necessary to sustain an adequate standard of living for the least advantaged; desert, which provides a justification for allocating income in accordance with differentials in work participation prior to retirement; and equality, which provides a normative rationale for universal citizenship entitlements. Their corresponding design features may be used to assess the degree to which the design of retirement pension systems is consistent with the requirements of distributive justice.