La méthode Daisugi: Conséquences de réformes graduelles des pensions selon l’âge

Belgium faces rapidly growing pension costs under the double effect of an increasing number of retirees and an increasing average pension (Noria effect of the pension). In this paper, we analyze how to control this growing pension cost in the future, using Belgian data on population and employment projections, so as to balance the budget in the long run. We consider immediate but gradual pension reforms that preserve past pension claims. The reforms can take two forms: adjusting the accrual rate (the rate at which pension claims are built-up during the career) or the indexation rate (the rate at which accrued pension claims are linked to nominal wage growth). As a first-order approach, we compare the (actuarial) prospective consequences of such gradual policies for all the cohorts alive today. We show that 80% of the voting population today prefers the accrual to the indexation reform, with the dramatic implication that the youngest half of the population would bear 85% of the total adjustment cost (compared to 65% under the indexation reform). Even worse, if we delay the accrual reform until 2030, the youngest half of the population today would bear 95% of the adjustment cost. The indexation reform provides a better generational balance because the phasing in over time has a larger base and, thus, reform cost can be smaller per capita. Two other interesting implications are that the indexation reform has a quicker effect on the growth of pension cost, and that all the new retirees would be better off with the indexation reform than with the accrual reform.