The IIASA World Population Program has received a new grant from the European Research Council to explore how to make pension policies more equitable by identifying fair normal pension ages and ensuring new measures of population ageing are up-to-date.
The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded the IIASA World Population Program a 2020 Proof of Concept grant to develop the groundbreaking research done as part of the ReAging project that produced new measures of population ageing appropriate for 21st century conditions. IIASA is the only Austrian-based research institute to be awarded a grant in this round.
Changes in national life expectancies and age structures require changes in policies; a particularly important area that requires adaptation is national pension policy. Recent changes in pension policies in some developed economies have been driven by financial considerations and have caused considerable dissent as they have been seen to place the burden of reform inequitably.
The new research plans to use Austria and Russia as case studies to develop tools that provide policymakers with fair normal pension ages and consistently up-to-date measures of population ageing that consider the changing characteristics of populations.
“With this new research we present an innovative methodology that produces scenarios of equitable normal pension ages using the details of a specific pension system. This project shows how fairness can enter public policy discussions of ageing,” says project leader Sergei Scherbov.
Research partner: European Research Council
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