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In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security, composed of sixteen members from both major political parties. Members were tasked with providing the president with recommendations on how to modernize the Social Security system, restore its fiscal soundness, and develop a workable system of personal retirement accounts as part of a newly structured program. This chapter presents perspectives on Social Security reform, drawn from service on the President's Commission. It begins with a discussion of the use of personal retirement accounts as a method of prefunding the Social Security system. The Commission to Strengthen Social Security developed three reform scenarios that incorporate personal retirement accounts as a central element in a modernized system of old-age security. The chapter focuses on one reform plan in particular — one that promises an enhanced and more reliable safety net while also providing workers the opportunity to invest in personal accounts with diversified investment choice and potentially lower risk. It is argued that reforms of this sort can help put Social Security on a self-financing basis for the first time in over a quarter of a century.

This chapter describes Brazil's social security system and the highly contentious reform process. While much of the rest of the South American region moved toward individual accounts, Brazil engaged in parametric reforms. Recently, the country introduced the fator previdenci ário, a system akin to a notional DC system, whereby contributions and benefits are strictly linked but contributions do not go into individual-funded savings accounts. Although a few political leaders have favoured private accounts, individual accounts never received much political support, and the transition costs are considered potentially prohibitive, reaching as high as 201% of GDP. Structural reform is complicated by the fact that the social security system is codified in the 1988 constitution, which means that any structural reform needs to go through the laborious and politically costly constitutional amendment process. It is argued that administrative and legislative reforms that would make the system more efficient and equitable are possible even when support for constitutional reform is lacking.

Over the past two decades many countries have adopted multipillar pension systems that include both a public DB and a private DC pillar. Critics of these pension reforms argue that the tight link between payroll contributions and benefits in the DC pillar produce lower pensions for women. In contrast, supporters of these reforms argue that multipillar systems remove distortions that favour men and permit a more targeted public pillar that help women. This chapter examines the differential impact on genders of the new and old systems in Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. In all three cases, the new social security system includes two mandatory components: privately managed funded individual accounts (DC) and a publicly managed and financed safety net. Women accumulate retirement funds and private annuities from the DC pillar of the multipillar systems that are only 30-40% of those of men. This effect can be mitigated by introducing two critical elements into the new systems: (a) targeting the new public pillars toward low earners, because the majority of low earners are women, and (b) restricting payout provisions such as joint annuity requirements. With these modifications, total lifetime retirement benefits for women would reach 60-80% of those for men. For ‘full-career’ married women, they would equal or exceed benefits of men.

This is the third of three chapters on the role of economic interests, and of systems for representing those interests, in the politics of welfare state reform; they explore the linkages between national welfare states and national economies, and examine the processes through which economic actors press their interests on policy makers. Here Rhodes explores the implications for welfare states of nationally negotiated social pacts in bridging and making innovative linkages between social security systems and employment rules and wage bargaining. The essential argument of Sect. 1 is that the emergence of social pacts is linked to common domestic and external pressures for welfare state reform in the European Union, and that contrary to the expectations of many commentators, these pressures are neither ‘disorganizing’ European capitalism nor neutralizing the power of the state; furthermore, rather than fragmenting political‐economic structures, pressures for reform have in many instances modified or even bolstered efforts at coordination via bargaining. Section 2 introduces the notion of ‘competitive corporatism’, and shows that underpinning these social pacts are varying degrees of associational cohesion, and two types of coalition — seeking distributional deals and productivity gains — which have complex linkages and overlaps. In ideal typical terms, it can be suggested that competitive corporatism is successfully achieved if underpinned by a close but flexible interlocking of these two types of coalition, although in practice it is not always possible, as has been demonstrated in various continental European countries.

The chapter presents, in synthesis form, some key elements of what is now understood about welfare regimes, their respective pathologies of development, their current paths of reform, and the challenges that still confront them. The first section examines welfare state performance thematically, focusing on employment, the scale and shape of social security systems, and distributive outcomes. The second section takes Europe’s four welfare regimes (those of Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, continental Europe and Southern Europe) and analyses their respective strengths and vulnerabilities. The conclusion considers where the literature on welfare states is likely to go in the future.

This chapter discusses Social Security reform in Canada in 1996-7. It argues that the C/QPP reforms of 1997 gave merely tweaks to the system as opposed to massive change, with most of the amendments subtle and not fully understood by the average Canadian citizen. These reforms were made without apparent opposition, which is somewhat surprising given that contribution rates were raised from 6 to 9.9% over a short 6-year period. The failure of the Seniors Benefit in 1996 was political, not actuarial. The government failed to understand how popular the OAS was and how emotional the response would be to proposed reforms given the very small- and long-deferred savings that were projected to result. The Canadian social security system today provides Canadians with a high level of income security while leaving ample room for individual savings and investments. The reforms of 1997 have meant that the CPP now rests on a healthy foundation. The latest CPP actuarial report shows that this system is sustainable for at least the next seventy-five years.

This chapter focuses on one fundamental aspects of an ageing population — how to pay for old age, individually and collectively. It also presents a study of the history of old age support in the UK and US and concludes that despite the quite different beginnings of the public pension and social security systems, government policy in both countries has become similarly locked in to a set of institutional arrangements which were devised to respond to immediate social and economic problems, but which have acquired a rationale and a dynamic of their own.

The chapter discusses the logic of reforms undertaken in the Swiss social security system for working-age people since the early 1990s when the country experienced a steep rise in unemployment for the first time in the post-war era. It shows that reforms have predominantly focused on parametric cost containment objectives within each of the three key benefit schemes (unemployment insurance, social assistance, and disability insurance), leaving little room for initiatives towards a more integrative unemployment protection approach. Indeed, the progressive extension of activation has not been followed by a greater benefit homogenization or a closer coordination of services. It is argued that one of the reasons for this particular movement is to be seen in the fragmentation of power and responsibilities induced by federalism.

This chapter explores the distributional effect of a change from the existing pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) U.S. Social Security system to one that combines both PAYGO and investment-based elements. The shift to the personal retirement account (PRA) system is potentially more significant for blacks than it is for whites in combating poverty in old age. Individuals with higher earnings and benefit levels receive more weight in the internal rate-of-return calculations. Furthermore, higher income groups tend to receive benefit increases from a PRA system relative to the Social Security system that are larger than those of lower income groups. All demographic and income groups can benefit from an investment-based system with a lower saving rate than the projected long-run PAYGO tax, and that the potential reductions in poverty are the largest for those most at risk of poverty.

This chapter analyses the institutional structure and quantitative development of national minimum income protection (MIP) systems. In this chapter, seventeen countries are studied and each of the countries is presented in a separate section. Each section is organised as follows: the first part studies the role of MIP in the overall social security system from a historical perspective. The second part describes the present welfare state context of the MIP systems on three policy areas: unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, and family policies. This second part relates to the comparative analysis of the welfare states presented in the previous chapter. The third part provides an overview of each of the country's MIP systems. This part shows which schemes exist, when they are introduced, who the target groups are, and how these schemes can be generally characterised. For each of the countries, a summary table is presented to illustrate the main components of the MIP system of the particular country. The fourth and final part analyses the development of MIP receipt from 1992 to 2010. For each country, a table that shows the development of the recipient numbers in the main MIP schemes are provided. Included as well are the total and long-term unemployment rates of each country. This approach allows for the explanation of the development of MIP receipt in the context of problem pressures, for which unemployment is a key indicator. Data on the recipients were taken from the EUM in database while data on unemployment were taken from the Eurostat official website.

There are two principal features of social security systems that constitute obstacles to the free movement of persons. These are nationality and residence requirements, and the territorial nature of many aspects of social security entitlement. This chapter shows how the Community has responded to the obstacles to free movement of persons that would exist if it did not concern itself with social security entitlements. It also examines the harmonizing work of the Community in the field of equal treatment in social security entitlements, and discusses how Community law is involved in pension entitlements.

This chapter addresses the redistribution in the current Social Security system in the United States. Social Security increases tax revenue from workers each year and pays out benefits to retirees and other beneficiaries. The results on annual redistribution describe large annual transfers of resources among different demographic groups—transfers that depend mostly on the ratio of beneficiaries to earners within each group. Its progressive benefit formula is the fundamental source of intracohort redistribution from Social Security. Different definitions of income can lead to different interpretations of the strength of the relationship between income and the transfers from Social Security. Low-income individuals clearly receive a higher rate of return from Social Security than higher-income individuals. The income-based redistribution in the current Social Security system is fairly modest compared to the total benefits paid.

Most social security systems around the world are operated on a pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) basis. Taxes collected from working people today are routed directly to pay the benefits of current retirees. Now these systems are faced with rapidly aging populations, increasing the number of retirees relative to the number of persons in the labor force. In addition, employees in most countries are leaving the labor force at younger and younger ages, further increasing the ratio of retirees to employed persons. The combination of these two trends, together with generous retirement benefits in many countries, has placed social security systems around the world under enormous financial stress. This chapter explains the nature of the problem faced by social security systems and then describes the various approaches that might be used to address the problem, commenting on the economic features of each. A commentary and discussion summary are also included at the end of the chapter.

This chapter describes the interwar expansion of social welfare policies and their role in alleviating economic insecurity in an era of unprecedented unemployment. The social security system established before the war and extended in the 1920s consisted of several independently administered programs—unemployment insurance, sickness and disability insurance, old age pensions, widows' and orphans' insurance, and the Poor Law. This safety net of many colors proved to be quite successful in alleviating poverty and maintaining the well-being of working-class households. The important role played by the safety net is clearly shown in the social surveys undertaken in the 1930s—between one-third and one-half of all working-class families surveyed received social income of some form. While the condition of the working class would have been considerably worse without the safety net, it contained many holes, which led to calls for a restructuring of social policy.

This chapter employs the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to produce estimates of lifetime incomes for a large sample of individuals, and then calculates the present value of taxes and benefits for each person. The Social Security system takes taxes from both a high-wage person and a low-wage person during working years, and it provides benefits to both individuals when retired. It is noted that the choice of rate affects the absolute size of the present value gains or loss for each group, as well as the pattern of progressivity. In the model presented, the impacts of the Feldstein-Samwick plan are the opposite of the influences of the current Social Security system. The pattern of progressivity is impacted by alternative assumptions, but it is affected in similar ways for the current system and proposed reforms.

Organized business and labor in Germany are both governed by the social security system. This has caused interdependence among the following: collective bargaining, the status and structure of intermediaries, and the social policy of the government. The way these three concepts were linked in Germany gave rise to a ‘pathological’ response to the emerging employment problems after the first oil crisis in areas such as unemployment insurance, labor market policy, and the pension system for the management of the labor supply. Although this situation maintained the spread of low wage and the rigid high wages caused by the collective bargaining system, the German economy experienced a lasting low-employment equilibrium. There was then a need for institutional reforms that would diminish the political status and power of organized business and labor.

This chapter attacks the notion that Social Security could go broke, a claim often used to make the case for privatization. It argues that the Social Security system cannot go bankrupt. Businesses or individuals can go bankrupt when they are legally obligated to make payments, do not have enough money coming in to cover those payments, and have no way to increase their inflow of money. A U.S. government program like Social Security will never be in such a situation. Social Security gets the money it needs to make benefit payments from taxes. If Social Security taxes and benefits get out of balance, either or both can be adjusted by our democratic processes. America will certainly have the capacity to pay the higher taxes projected to be needed in the rather distant future to finance current-formula Social Security benefits. President George W. Bush's economists project that by 2080 the payroll tax will have to rise, raising the total tax burden on the American public by 4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to about 31 percent. That is a significant rise, but it is far from impossible as a matter of economics or politics.

This chapter examines the welfare contexts in which the minimum income protection (MIP) systems are institutionally embedded. Particular focus is given on the social arrangements of three population groups: unemployed persons, single parents and older persons. These groups have the tendency to fall into the last safety net if other social provisions fail to protect them adequately. The chapter ends by providing hypotheses on the role and salience of MIP systems that are derived from these inter-country variations of protectiveness of social security systems.

The previous chapter examined how one form of worklessness — unemployment — is associated with an increased risk of ill-health and mortality. This chapter examines the opposite relationship, in which the development of ill-health can result in long-term worklessness. The first section examines health-related worklessness within the UK social security system. Four key issues in current social policy debates about health-related worklessness are then examined: hidden unemployment, cultures of worklessness, the medicalization of sickness absence, and the reserve army of labour thesis. The chapter then examines socio-economic inequalities in the employment consequences of ill-health. The final section takes a more international approach by comparing health-related worklessness by welfare state regime.