By browsing this website, you acknowledge the use of a simple identification cookie. It is not used for anything other than keeping track of your session from page to page. OK
1

Do public pensions matter for health and wellbeing among retired persons? Basic and income security pensions across 13 Western European countries

Bookmarks
Article

Esser, Ingrid ; Palme, Joakim

International Journal of Social Welfare

2010

19

S1

103-120

comparison ; health ; life expectancy ; pension scheme ; statistics ; well being

OECD countries

Social protection

English

Bibliogr.;[Internet download]

"Mortality rates suggest that elderly people in the advanced welfare democracies have experienced dramatically improved health over the past decades. This study examined the importance of public pensions for self-reported health and wellbeing among retired persons in 13 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries in 2002–2005. New public pension data make it possible to distinguish between two qualities of pension systems: 'basic security' for those who have no or a short work history, and 'income security' for those with a more extensive contribution record. For enhanced cross-national comparison, relative measures of ill-health and wellbeing were constructed to account for cultural bias in responses to survey questions and heterogeneity among countries in the general level of population health. Overall, better health is found in countries with more generous pensions, although the results are gendered; for women's health, high basic security of the pension system appears to be particularly important. Women's wellbeing also tends to be more dependent on the quality of basic security."

Digital



Bookmarks