EUROPEAN PAPERS ON THE NEW WELFARE

Content summary

Editorial
Orio Giarini

Pension Economics and the Four Pillars: a Never-Ending Challenge
Patrick M. Liedtke

The Challenge of Increasing Life Spans for Employment and Pension Schemes: An Open Letter to All Those Who Are, or Will Be, 65
Orio Giarini

Strategies for the Welfare Society in the Larger Europe: the Insurance Perspective
Sergio Balbinot

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Abstract
One of the most important levers for making the healthcare system in Slovenia more efficient through the implementation of an urgent reform process in the near future is to use a services management approach — management as in a planning, organization, information and controlling system and a decision-making process in the proper choice of leadership for healthcare institutions. The different political options in Slovenia could change the orientations and the solutions concerning relations between public and private sector healthcare. The question of efficient leadership in healthcare institutions remains. Business and managerial functions are basic tools for harmonizing and for overcoming the problems among medical and business sectors in healthcare institutions such as hospitals and clinics.
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1. Introduction

Health spending in OECD countries averages more than 8% of gross domestic product (GDP) and the share is rising. Overall, some three quarters of that spending is publicly financed. Private health insurance accounts, on average, for only a quarter of private-sector financing, although there is great cross-country variation. In a third of the OECD member countries at least 30% of the population has private health insurance, while market size is negligible in nearly as many countries. Private health insurance also plays a variety of roles, ranging from primary coverage for particular population groups to a supporting role for public systems.
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1. Older workers and unemployed under strain

The situation in the Croatian economy is characterized by a GDP per capita of around 5000 to 6000 USD, modest economic growth of 4% per year, a large number (over one million) of retired people and an unemployment rate around 20%. In this environment the most vulnerable groups would appear to be the unemployed and retirees with low pensions. The government as well as many independent institutions and economists are proposing different plans and ideas, which would help speed up economic growth and improve living standards in the country. One such idea is the project of gradual retirement.
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Abstract
1. Demographic trends
2. Impact of population ageing on public spending
3. Employment perspectives and problems
4. Welfare system and competitiveness
The Czech economy faces increasingly tough international competition. The economy must bounce back. Our social security systems must stay functional and economically viable in an ageing society without placing impossible burdens on the next generation. The labour market must be made more flexible and obstacles to employment must be removed. Non-wage labour costs must remain at acceptable levels for both business and employees.
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Two major tendencies, having high visibility and causing intense debate, have marked social developments over the past three decades. The first of these has been the emergence of the concept and practices of lifelong learning. The traditional conception and organization of education as a continuous block, ten to eighteen years in duration, situated at the beginning of life and institutionalized around schools and universities, is being replaced by a more flexible scheme, whereby formal schooling, as well as non-formal and informal education, extends over increasingly long periods. The focus has gradually shifted to learning. Equally, work is no longer perceived as an activity consigned to the continuous block of adult life, devoted to contractual employment for thirty or forty years in productive enterprises, administrative institutions, or services. Work itself has been divided into categories similar to the formal, non-formal, and informal triad, according to the nature of remuneration (monetarized, monetized, or non-monetized, see Giarini and Liedtke, Wie wir arbeiten werden, Hoffman und Campe, Hamburg, 1998). It has also been extended to become ‘lifelong work’.
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1. Employment rates in Europe

The European trade union movement supports the ambitious targets set by the European Council in Lisbon (2000) and Stockholm (2001): increase of the general employment rate to 70% and of the employment rate of older workers (55 to 64) to 50% by 2010. This increase is crucial in order to ensure the sustainability of the pension system, whatever be their design.
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1. Introduction

Recent Dutch experience of employment for older workers differs significantly from that of other continental countries like France and Germany. In a nutshell, over the last 7 or 8 years, the Netherlands have been able to start reversing the early retirement trend and improving employment at end of career. As a result, the employment rate of 55-64-year-old Dutch workers increased from 30% in 1995 to 42% in 2002 (for men from 41% to 55% and for women from 18% to 29%), and the average age of exit from the labour force rose from around 60 years in 1995 to 62 years in 2002 (cf. EUROSTAT, 2004).
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Population ageing, better health of older persons, and lower birth rates will, in the near future, have a significant effect on the workings of labour markets in virtually all industrialized countries. There are three main reasons for this observation. First, these developments will inevitably change the age composition of the labour supply: the proportion of older workers in the labour market will increase. A second implication of the changing demographic structure is the negative effect that this development has on (primarily unfunded) public pension systems. Most pension funds in many industrialized countries are already confronted with severe financial difficulties, and innovative solutions for assuring future pensions are called for. Finally, the ongoing demographic change will, with the current retirement age, significantly reduce the labour supply. Furthermore, this reduction in labour supply cannot be compensated for by capital accumulation (e.g. Börsch-Supan, 2001).
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Abstract
Using the Italian case as a learning example, this short note will discuss the issues raised by the goal of working life prolongment. Firstly, it will be argued that such a goal is of paramount relevance vis-à-vis the increase in life expectancy as a way-out from the apparent trade-off between financial sustainability and social adequacy of pensions systems. The difficulties of fulfilling such a goal, taking account of the interactions between demand and supply factors and of the inheritance of past rules and habits, will then be discussed with reference to the Italian case.
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