Academic literature on the topic 'Old age pensions – Europe, Central – Finance'

Pension systems around Europe are being reformed for several decades already. Main objectives of the reforms are to enable people to have adequate income at retirement and to ensure the system’s financial sustainability. Many European countries implemented policies aiming at diversification of financing sources of income at older age: risk-sharing between pay-as-you-go and funded pensions is expected to help in achieving social policy objectives towards pension systems. Central and Eastern European countries (CEE) face even more challenges in ensuring adequate income at retirement. First, CEE countries were required to transform radically their economies in 1990s towards market economy, including old age pension systems. Second, in order to ensure diversified future old age pension income and attract more financial means to the system, introduction of funded pensions from scratch and ensuring as wide as possible coverage with funded pension schemes was of primary importance also. The paper discusses latest developments of retirement pension systems in Europe and state involvement in private pension schemes. In doing so, the focus is on the introduction of funded private pension schemes in selected CEE countries. In spite of initially chosen different paths for the reforms, inconsistent state policies towards funded pensions in the CEE countries resulted in similar outcomes of the reforms. The paper starts with discussion on main objectives of pension systems – enabling people to have adequate income at retirement and ensuring financial sustainability of the systems. Further, possibilities to achieve the objectives of pension reforms are analysed – diversification of income at retirement. Third part of the paper discusses prevailing debates on future of welfare state as such and individualisation trends within different European welfare state models. These debates and perceptions of population about responsibilities of a state for individual welfare affect direction of reforms and future shape of old age pension systems. Fourth part of the paper deals with state policies and tools that are used for encouragement of participation in supplementary pensions. Final part of the paper presents more detailed outline of the pension reforms in selected CEE countries and summarises particular challenges of their pension systems. The paper ends with a discussion on policy implications in relation to latest developments of pension systems in CEE countries.

The social security system in each country, if it exists, plays a crucial role in supporting citizens and specific expenditures of the public finance system. Its importance in public spending depends on many factors; in particular, on its source and on its form of financing benefits or pensions. The social security system in Poland is composed of a social insurance and welfare system, a health insurance system, unemployment and family benefits, from which are enumerated an old-age pension, invalidity pension, sickness and maternity insurance, insurance against accidents at work and occupational diseases, and health insurance. The Polish social security system often changes due to implementation of improvements or limits on public spending. The most famous reform took place in 1999 and introduced the largest number of changes in the sphere of pension security. Because the scale of public funds that are passed on to the social security system is very large, pension reforms should are crucial for improving the state of public finances. The aim of the paper is to present changes that took place in the Polish pension system between 1999 and 2017 and how those changes influenced the amount of public expenditures. The study reviews the research hypothesis: frequent changes in the pension system have a negative impact on the state of Polish public finance. The study covers the years 1999-2017, as well as the previous four years before the implementation of the pension reform. Basic research materials used to conduct the research analysis were reports on implementation of the state budget, data prepared by the Social Insurance Institution and the Agricultural Social Insurance Fund as well as statistical data obtained from the Central Statistical Office.

Purpose During the transition from socialist to post-socialist regimes, many Central and Eastern Europe societies have developed a broad sector of informal work. This development has caused substantial economic and social problems. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach This paper aims to answer two questions regarding European countries with a relatively weak economy and welfare state: what are the differences in the social characteristics between workers in formal and informal employment? And how might they be explained? According to the main assumption, a key reason why people work in undeclared employment in such countries is that they are in particularly vulnerable positions in the labour market. This paper uses the example of Moldova. The empirical study is based on a unique survey data set from the National Statistical Office of Moldova covering formal and informal employment. Findings The findings show that, in informal employment, workers in rural areas, workers with a low level of education, young workers and older workers – in the final years of their careers and after the age of retirement – are over-represented. It seems that a significant reason why these workers are often engaged in informal employment is the lack of alternatives in the labour market, particularly in rural areas, compounded by limited social benefits from unemployment benefits and pensions. Originality/value Research about social differences between workers in formal and informal employment in the countries of the European periphery is rare. This paper makes a new contribution to the theoretical debate and research regarding work in informal employment.

In this paper, we offer an explanation for cyclical reforms to pension systems, based on the experience of countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) over the last three decades. We conclude that in making the transition to funded pension design, governments not only transfer longevity and fiscal risks to the individual but also absorb risks transferred from the public, with each market actor transferring undiversifiable risks to the other. This pathway of hidden risks, which has not previously been discussed in the literature, stems from a public expectation that citizens will enjoy risk premiums and adequate old-age benefits, an expectation that evolves into political pressure. The outcomes of this risk path are realized in financial transfers, such as means-tested social security and minimum pension guarantees. Consequently, funded pension designs converge naturally into a new landscape paradigm of risk-sharing, with intergenerational and intragenerational components. Financial crises such as the one accompanying the recent COVID-19 pandemic foster the convergence process.

AbstractThis paper estimates the aggregate effects of government income transfers shocks for a sample of EU countries. I construct a new measure of transfers shocks based on a dataset by public finance experts of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). The identification strategy consists of a narrative analysis of policy actions in old age pensions reported in the ESCB dataset. I find that increases in old age pensions have a positive impact on aggregate expenditure components and employment consistent with a multiplier effect between 0 and 1.

This Special Issue addresses the concept of sustainability in pension systems from a wide range of perspectives. It examines the central questions raised about sustainable, socially responsible investments and other associated concepts by opening up a comprehensive discussion with an interdisciplinary approach. Normative trends and international cases are analysed in some detail concerning the situation of specific European Member States. Also, the concept of sustainability in European occupational pension schemes is questioned as an efficient vehicle able to assure adequate pension entitlements to all workers to avoid old-age poverty.

The supplementary occupational and individual pension systems in Central and Eastern European countries (CEE) are poorly regulated while their architecture is very complex. Law on supplementary pensions focuses on ensuring financial security of financial institutions, their liquidity and solvency, as well as on stimulating the development of additional pension protection understood as higher coverage and assets under management. The efficiency guarantees and cost limits have not been implemented and the profitability of such products for individual savers is rarely assessed. The analyses conducted on the regulation of voluntary old-age pension systems in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and The Czech Republic indicated the main inadequacies of the supplementary old-age provision offered. They relate to the lack of preliminary and regular product assessment, inadequacy of plan design, efficiency and costliness. The recommended changes relate to risk sharing, forms of pension benefits, limits on costs, information policy and transparency.

Introduction This article explores the phenomenon of the Creative City in the context of Aberdeen, Scotland’s third-largest city. The common perception of Aberdeen is likely to revolve around its status, for the last 50 years, as Europe’s Oil & Gas Capital. However, for more than a decade Aberdeen’s city planners have sought to incorporate creativity and culture in their placemaking. The most visible expression of this was the unsuccessful 2013 bid to become the UK City of Culture 2017 (CoC), which was referred to as a “reality check” by Marie Boulton (BBC), the councillor charged with the culture portfolio. This article reviews and appraises subsequent policies and actions. It looks at Aberdeen’s history and its current Cultural Strategy and how events have supported or inhibited the reimagining of Aberdeen as a Creative and Cultural City. Landry’s “Lineages of the Creative City” tracks the rise in interest around culture and creative sectors and highlights that there is more to the creative city than economic growth, positing that a creative city is a holistic environment in which “ordinary people can make the extra-ordinary happen” (2). Comunian develops Landry’s concept of hard (infrastructural) assets and soft (people and activity) assets by introducing Complexity Theory to examine the interactions between the two. Comunian argues that a city should be understood as a complex adaptive system (CAS) and that the interconnectivity of consumption and production, micro and macro, and networks of actors must be incorporated into policy thinking. Creating physical assets without regard to what happens in and around them does not build a creative city. Aberdeen: Context and History Important when considering Aberdeen is its remoteness: 66 miles north of its closest city neighbour Dundee, 90 miles north of Edinburgh and 125 miles north-east of Glasgow. For Aberdonians travel is a necessity to connect with other cultural centres whether in Scotland, the UK, Europe, or further afield, making Aberdeen’s nearly 900-year-old port a key asset. Sitting at the mouth of the River Dee, which marks Aberdeen’s southern boundary, this key transport hub has long been central to Aberdeen’s culture giving rise to two of the oldest established businesses in the UK: the Port of Aberdeen (1136) and the Shore Porter’s Society (1498). Fishing and trade with Europe thrived and connections with the continent led to the establishment of Aberdeen’s first university: King’s College (Scotland’s third and the UK’s fifth) in 1495. A second, Marischal College, was established in 1593, joining forces with King’s in 1860 to become the University of Aberdeen. The building created in 1837 to house Marischal College is the second-largest granite building in the world (VisitAberdeenshire, Marischal) and now home to Aberdeen City Council (ACC). Robert Gordon University (RGU), awarded university status in 1992, grew out of an institution established in 1729 (RGU, Our History); this period marked the dawning of the Scottish Enlightenment when Aberdeen’s Wise Club were key to an intellectual discourse that changed western thinking (RSA). Gray’s School of Art, now part of RGU, was established in 1885, at the same time as Aberdeen Art Gallery which holds a collection of national significance (ACC, Art Gallery). Aberdeen’s northern boundary is marked by its second river, the River Don, which has also contributed to the city’s history, economics, and culture. For centuries, paper and woollen mills, including the world-famous Crombie, thrived on its banks and textile production was the city’s largest employer, with one mill employing 3,000 staff (P&J, Broadford). While the city and surrounds have been home to notable creatives, including writers Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Lord Byron; musicians Annie Lennox, Dame Evelyn Glennie, and Emeli Sandé; fashion designer Bill Gibb and dancer Michael Clark, it has struggled to attract and retain creative talent, and there is a familiar exodus of art school graduates to the larger and more accepted creative cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London. In 2013, at the time of the CoC bid, ACC recognised that creative industries graduates leaving the city was “a serious issue” (ACC, Cultural Mapping 1). The City of Culture Bid This recognition came at a time when ACC acknowledged that Aberdeen, with already low unemployment, required an influx of workforce. An ACC document (Cultural Mapping) cites Richard Florida’s proposal that a strong cultural offer attracts skilled workers to a city, adding that they “look for a lively cultural life in their choice of location” (7) and quoting an oil executive: “our poor city centre is often cited as a major obstacle in attracting people” (7). Changing the image of the city to attract new residents appears to have been a key motivation for the CoC bid. The CoC assessor noted this in their review of the bid, citing a report that 120,000 recruits were required in the city and agreeing that Aberdeen needed to “change perceptions of the city to retain and attract talent” (Regeneris 1). Aberdeen’s CoC bid was rejected at the first shortlisting stage, with feedback that the artistic vision “lacked depth” and “that cultural activity in the city was weaker than in several other bidding areas” (Regeneris 3). In an exploration of the bidding process, McGillivray and Turner highlight two factors which link to other concerns and feedback about the bid. Firstly, they compare Aberdeen’s choice of a Bid Manager from the business community with Paisley’s choice of one from their local arts sector in their bid for CoC 2021, which was successful in being shortlisted, highlighting different motivators behind the bids. Secondly, Aberdeen secured a bid team member from “Pafos’s bid to be 2017 European Capital of Culture (ECC), who subsequently played an important role” for Kalamata’s 2021 ECC bid (41), showing Aberdeen’s reluctance to develop local talent. A Decade of Investment ACC responded to the “reality check” with a series of investments in the hard assets of the city. Major refurbishment of two key buildings, the Music Hall and the Art Gallery, caused them both to be closed for several years, significantly diminishing the cultural offer in the city. The Music Hall re-opened in 2018 (Creative Scotland) and the Art Gallery in 2019 (McLean). In 2021, the extended and updated Art Gallery was named “Scotland’s building of the year” by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS) (Museums Association). Concurrent with this was the development of “Europe’s largest new events complex, TECA [now P&J live] part financed through a £370 million stock market bond issue” (InvestAberdeen). Another cultural asset of the city which has been undergoing a facelift since 2019 is Union Terrace Gardens (UTG), the green heart of the city centre, gifted to the public in 1877. The development of this asset has had a chequered history. In 2008 it had been awarded “funding from Aberdeen Council (£3 million), the Scottish Arts Council (£4.3M) and Scottish Enterprise (£2 million)” (Aberdeenvoice) to realise a new multi-disciplinary contemporary art centre to be called ‘Northern Light’ and housed in a purpose-designed building (Brizac Gonzalez). The project, led by Peacock Visual arts, a printmaking centre of excellence and gallery founded in 1974, had secured planning permission. It would host Peacock Visual Arts, City Moves dance company, and the ACC arts development team. It echoed similar cultural partnership approaches, such as Dundee Contemporary Arts, although notably without involvement from the universities. Three months later, a counterbid to radically re-think UTG as a vast new city square was proposed by oil tycoon Sir Ian Wood, who backed the proposal with £50 million of his own funds, requiring matching finance by the city and ownership of the Gardens passing to private hands. Resistance to these plans came from ‘Friends of UTG’, and a public consultation was held. ACC voted to adopt Wood’s plans and drop those of Peacock, but a change of administration in the local authority overturned Wood’s plans in August 2012. A significant portion of the funding granted to the Northern Lights project was consumed in the heated public debate and the remainder was lost to the city, as was the Wood money, providing a highly charged backdrop to the CoC bid and an unfortunate divide created between the business and culture sectors that is arguably still discernible in the city today. According to the Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce (AGCC) 2022 Investment Tracker, the nearly complete UTG transformation has cost £28.3m. The AGCC trackers since 2016 provide a useful reference for a wider view of investment in the region over this period. During this period, ACC commissioned two festivals: Spectra (ACC, Culture Programme 5), a festival of light curated by a Manchester-based organisation, and NuArt (VisitAberdeenshire, Nuart), a street-art festival curated by a Stavanger-based team. Both festivals deliver large-scale public spectacles but have little impact on the development of the cultural sector in the city. The drivers of footfall, income generation, and tourism are key motivators for these festivals, supporting a prevailing narrative of cultural consumption over cultural production in the city, despite Regeneris’s concerns about “importing of cultural activity, which might not leave behind a cultural sector” (1) and ACC’s own published concerns (ACC, Cultural Mapping). It is important to note that in 2014 the oil and gas industry that brought prosperity to Aberdeen was severely impacted upon by a drop in price and revenue. Many jobs were lost, people left the city, and housing prices, previously inflated, fell dramatically. The attention of the authorities turned to economic regeneration of the city and in 2015, the Aberdeen City Region Deal (UK Gov), bringing £250m to the region, (REF) was signed between the UK Government, Scottish Government, ACC, Aberdeenshire Council, and Opportunity North East (ONE). ONE “is the private sector leader and catalyst for economic diversification in northeast Scotland” with board members from industry, enterprise, AGCC, the councils, the universities, the harbour, and NHS. ONE focuses on five ‘pillars’: Digital Technology, Energy, Life Sciences, Tourism and Food, and Drink & Agriculture. A Decade of Creativity and Cultural Development Aberdeen’s ambitious cultural capital infrastructure spending of the last decade has seen the creation or refurbishment of significant hard assets in the city. The development of people (Cohendet et al.), the soft assets that Landry and Comunian agree are essential to the complex system that is a Creative City, has also seen development over this time. In 2014, RGU commissioned a review of Creative Industries in the North East of Scotland. The report notes that: the cultural sector in the region is strong at the grass roots end, but less so the higher up the scale it goes. There is no producing theatre, and no signature events or assets, although the revitalised art gallery might provide an opportunity to address this. (Ekos 2) This was followed by an international conference at which other energy cities (Calgary, Houston, Perth, and Oslo) presented their culture strategies, providing useful comparators for Aberdeen and a second RGU report (RGU, Regenerating). A third report, (RGU, New North), set out a vision for the region’s cultural future. The reports recommend strategy, leadership, and vision in the development of the cultural and creative soft assets of the region and the need to create conditions for graduate and practitioner retention. Also in 2014, RGU initiated the Look Again Festival of Art and Design, an annual festival to address a gap in the city festival roster and meet a need arising from the closure of both Art Gallery and Music Hall for refurbishment. The first festival took place in 2015 with a weekend-long public event showcasing a series of thought-provoking installations and events which demonstrated a clear appetite amongst the public and partner organisations for more activity of this type. Between 2015 and 2019, the festivals grew from strength to strength and increased in size and ambition, “carving out a new creative community in Aberdeen” (Williams). The 2019 festival involved 119 creatives, the majority from the region, and created 62 paid opportunities. Look Again expanded and became a constant presence and vehicle for sectoral and skills development, supporting students, graduates, volunteers, and new collectives, focussing on social capital and the intangible creative community assets in the city. Creative practitioners were supported with a series of programmes such as ‘Cultivate’ (2018), funded by Creative Scotland, that provided mentoring to strengthen business sustainability and networking events to improve connectivity in the sector. Cultivate also provided an opportunity to undertake further research, and a survey of over 100 small and micro creative businesses presented a view of a tenacious sector, committed to staying in the region but lacking structured and tailored support. The project report noted consistent messages about the need for “a louder voice for the sector” and concluded that further work was needed to better profile, support, and connect the sector (Cultivate 15). Comunian’s work supports this call to give greater consideration to the interplay of the agents in the creation of a strong creative city. In 2019, Look Again’s evolving role in creative sector skills development was recognised when they became part of Gray’s School of Art. A partnership quickly formed with the newly created Entrepreneurship & Innovation Group (EIG), a team formed within RGU to drive entrepreneurial thinking across all schools of the university. Together, Look Again and EIG ran a Creative Accelerator which became a prototype for a validated Creative Entrepreneurship post-graduate short-course that has supported around 120 creative graduates and practitioners with tailored business skills, contextual thinking, and extended peer networks. Meanwhile, another Look Again collaboration with the newly re-opened Art Gallery provided pop-up design events that many of these small businesses took part in, connecting them with public-facing retail opportunities and, for some, acquisitions for the Gallery’s collection. Culture Aberdeen During this time and after a period of public consultation, a new collaborative group, ‘Culture Aberdeen’, emerged. Membership of the group includes many regional cultural and arts organisations including ACC, both universities, and Aberdeen Civic Forum, which seeks “to bring the voice and views of all communities to every possible level of decision making”. The group subsequently published Culture Aberdeen: A Culture Strategy for the City of Aberdeen 2018-2028, which was endorsed by ACC in their first Cultural Investment Impact Report. The strategy sets out a series of cultural ambitions including a bid to become a UNESCO Creative City, establishing an Aberdeen Biennale, and becoming a national centre of excellence for an (unspecified) artform. This collaboration brings a uniting vision to Aberdeen’s creative activity and places of culture and presents a more compelling identity as a creative city. It also begins to map to Comunian’s concept of CAS and establish a framework for realising the potential of hard assets by strategically envisioning and leading the agents, activities, and development of the city’s creative sector. Challenges for Delivery of the Strategy In delivering a strategy based on collaborative efforts, it is essential to have shared goals and strong governance “based on characteristics such as trust, shared values, implicit standards, collaboration, and consultation” (Butcher et al. 77). Situations like Aberdeen’s tentative bid for UNESO Creative City status, which began in late 2018 but was halted in early 2019, suggest that shared goals and clear governance may not be in place. Wishing to join other UNESCO cities across Scotland – Edinburgh (Literature), Glasgow (Music), and Dundee (Design) –, Aberdeen had set its sights on ‘City of Craft and Folk Art’; that title subsequently went to the city of Perth in 2022, limiting Aberdeen’s future hopes of securing UNESCO Creative City status. In 2022, Aberdeen is nearly halfway through its strategy timeline; to achieve its vision by 2028, the leadership recommended in 2014 needs to be established and given proper authority and backing. Covid-19 has been particularly disruptive for the strategy, arriving early in its implementation and lasting for two years during which collaborators have, understandably, had to attend to core business and crisis management. Picking up the threads of collaborative activity at the same time as ‘returning to normal’ will be challenging. The financial impacts of Covid-19 have also hit arts organisations and local councils particularly hard, creating survival challenges that displace future investment plans. The devastation caused to city centres across the UK as shops close and retail moves online is keenly felt in Aberdeen. Yet the pandemic has also seen the growth of pockets of new activity. With falling demand for business space resulting in more ‘meanwhile spaces’ and lower rents, practitioners have been able to access or secure spaces that were previously prohibitive. Deemouth Artists’ Studios, an artist-run initiative, has provided a vital locus of support and connectivity for creatives in the city, doubling in size over the past two years. ‘We Are Here Scotland’ arrived in response to the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, as a Community Interest Company initiated in Aberdeen to support black creatives and creatives of colour across Scotland. Initiatives such as EP Spaces that re-purpose empty offices as studios have created a resource, albeit precarious, for scores of recent creative graduates, supporting an emerging creative community. The consequences of the pandemic for the decade of cultural investment and creative development are yet to be understood, but disrupted strategies are hard to rekindle. Culture Aberdeen’s ability to resolve or influence these factors is unclear. As a voluntary network without a cohesive role or formal status in the provision of culture in the city, and little funding and few staff to advocate on its behalf, it probably lacks the strength of leadership required. Nevertheless, work is underway to refresh the strategy in response to the post-pandemic needs of the city and culture, and the Creative Industries more broadly, are, once again, beginning to be seen as part of the solution to recovery as new narratives emerge. There is a strong desire in the city’s and region’s creative communities to nurture, realise, and retain emerging talent to authentically enrich the city’s culture. Since the 2013 failed CoC bid, much has been done to rekindle confidence and shine a light on the rich creative culture that exists in Aberdeen, and creative communities are gaining a new voice for their work. 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Defense Date: 28/10/2009
Examining Board: Nicholas Barr (LSE), Martin Kohli (EUI), Martin Rhodes (University of Denver, formerly EUI) (Supervisor), Tine Stanovnik (University of Ljubljana)
The study analyses the legislation and implementation of pension reforms in four Central, Eastern and Southeastern European countries: Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. By comparing the political economy of their policymaking processes, it pinpoints regularities between institutional settings, actor constellations, decision-making strategies and reform outcomes. The dissertation addresses three research questions: Why was reform possible and how was it carried through? What are its distributive consequences? Does it guarantee long-term political support? The main argument is that viable pension reforms should not be seen as an event, but rather as a continuing process that must be fiscally, socially and politically sustainable. The primary goals of a pension scheme are poverty reduction, consumption smoothing and insurance. These can be achieved only if the scheme enjoys continuing political support at all levels. Elaborating on this premise, the research makes four broad claims; two related to legislation and two to the implementation of reforms. First, policymakers in post-socialist countries quickly exhausted the possibility of enacting simple corrective measures and were hence forced to negotiate pension reforms with the pro-welfare coalition. Complex exchanges between policy and politics became central to these negotiated bargains. Second, systemic reforms introducing policy innovations, such as funding, were politically superior to parametric changes. Systemic innovations are a source of popular support and free room for manoeuvre. The new funded elements are traded for cuts in public pension schemes. Third, trade-offs between fiscal and social sustainability emerged during legislation, jeopardizing successful implementation. Excessive emphasis on financial viability conflicts with sound social policy. Conversely, failure to eliminate extreme imbalances between contributions and benefits, and unjustified special privileges disrupt the fiscal budget. Finally, how legislation is conducted is important for a reform’s political acceptability. Negotiated bargains are qualitatively different from other modes of policymaking. Contrary to a received wisdom in the literature, the thesis argues that inclusive decision-making, as opposed to limited bargaining, increases both the effectiveness of reforms and their political sustainability over time. The involvement of a greater number of stakeholders allows for smoother implementation: costly deviations from efficient solutions are avoided, and incentives to stick to the reform’s initial rationale are put in place. With respect to existing work, this study makes two innovations. First, it extends analysis to ten years of implementation, following the reform wave of the late 1990s. Second, it employs theoretical instruments to study Eastern pension reforms that are entirely consistent with those applied to the West. The dissertation links the legislative and the implementation phases together by adapting the Natali-Rhodes’ theoretical framework, developed for pension reforms in Continental Europe. The ‘spillover’ is justified on multiple grounds. First, sufficient analogies exist between the institutional structure and the mounting problems of Bismarckian retirement arrangements and post-socialist pension schemes. Second, this approach accounts for the popularity of systemic pension reforms in the region. By focussing on the ‘creative opportunism’ of policymakers, it shows how they simultaneously introduced policy improvements and imposed benefit cuts. Finally, the framework is easily extended to the implementation of reforms, thereby linking individual decision-makers’ preferences to policy outcomes and their consequent sustainability in time.

The dramatic political and economic changes witnessed by Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Former Soviet Union (FSU) since the late 1980s did not leave the area of old-age security unaffected. While the inherited pension systems were rather uniform, the past seventeen years have brought diversity to the region's retirement schemes. Most transition countries have opted for parametric reforms, thus changing key characteristics of their pre-existing pay-as-you-go schemes. A number of countries in the region have embarked on partial or full pension privatization, thereby following the much advertised Latin American role models. Moreover, some countries have introduced national defined-contribution plans, similar to the schemes of Sweden and Italy. Overall, contributory approaches to old-age security — whether publicly or privately organized — dominate the post-socialist pension reform agenda. This chapter outlines the pre-1989 legacy in old-age security and the impact of transformation on the existing retirement schemes. It reviews pension reforms in CEE and the FSU and evaluates the state of pension reform in the post-socialist world.

William Beveridge and his Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services of 1942 continue to occupy a pivotal position in the history of social security provision not only in Britain and Europe but also in the wider world into the twenty-first century. This chapter examines why the Beveridge Plan and its ideas were so popular and seemingly so authoritative. Although Beveridge's long public career in social policy had been mainly concerned with the quite different sphere of unemployment insurance, his ideas about old-age pensions did not spring from nowhere in 1941, but dated back to the year 1907. In 1908, he became a personal adviser to Winston Churchill at the Board of Trade, where he was instrumental in inserting many of his ideas about social insurance into the unemployment provisions of the National Insurance Act of 1911. At the time of his appointment as chairman of the Social Insurance Committee in June 1941, Beveridge had almost no specialist knowledge of pensions administration or pensions finance.