Pension programs around the world: Determinants of social pension

Old-age poverty is to become one of the most pressing issues in the coming decades given the demographic trends forecasted. Particularly in developing countries this could be an obstacle to inclusive and sustainable growth as well as the fight against all forms of poverty (SDG 1), through shocks on consumption and production patterns within countries. Investigating social, non-contributory pension systems highlights their potential for countries to implement one of the main instrument to fight old-age poverty. A new comprehensive global data set of 185 countries over the 1960-2012 period on the provision of social pension across the world allows the author to examine trends in social pension provision in the last five decades and study internal and external political economy drivers of implementation. Grouped event history data allows the control of duration dependence on the probability of social pension adoption in the multivariate setting. Results show that internal (national) demand drivers are more important than external (international) peer pressure while the composition of the political system and of governments seem to be major factors influencing the provision of social pension mainly in developing countries. Since only 50 percent of countries provide against old-age poverty countries may use the window-of-opportunity of the 2030 Agenda to reach “nationally appropriate social protection systems” (SDG 1.3; UN, 2015).