Documents Fuchs, Michael 2 results

"The portability of social benefits is gaining importance given the increasing share of individuals working at least part of their life outside their home country. Bilateral social security agreements (BSSAs) are considered a crucial approach to establishing portability, but the functionality and effectiveness of these agreements have not yet been investigated; thus importance guidance for policy makers in migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries is missing. To shed light on how BSSAs work in practice, this document is part of a series providing information and lessons from studies of portability in four diverse but comparable corridors: Austria-Turkey, Germany-Turkey, Belgium-Morocco, and France-Morocco. A summary policy paper draws broader conclusions and offers overarching policy recommendations. This report looks specifically into the working of the Germany-Turkey corridor. Findings suggest that the BSSA between Germany and Turkey is broadly working well, with no main substantive issues in the area of pension portability and few minor substantive issues concerning health care portability and financing. Some process issues around information and automation of information exchange are recognized and are beginning to be addressed."

"This paper reviews changes in pension policies in EU countries between 1995 and 2005 and describes how they might affect risk of poverty for future pensioner populations. The pension landscape in Europe has changed considerably in the past decade and the paper highlights commonalities as well as differences in pension reforms across these countries. A common trend is that the retirement incomes drawn from the public pension systems are on the decline, the changes are likely to shift more risks towards individuals, and there are fewer possibilities of redistribution in favour of the lower income individuals. The paper includes exploratory projections of how the risk of elderly poverty might evolve in the future. The countries where the benefit ratio is set to decline significantly, as expected, would see at-risk-poverty rates increase quite substantially, especially during the period 2025-2050, when the bulk of the decline is expected. This analysis points towards the importance of a more comprehensive assessment of the reforms, in particular in their impact on vulnerable groups (such as women and disabled people with disruptive work history) and in the clarity of the signals they give to individuals in extending their working career if they want to avoid greater risks of poverty during retirement."