The Quest for Pension Reform: Poland's Security though Diversity

All over the world, pension systems have financing difficulties that need to be addressed. There are three ways of dealing with pension systems problems, namely subsidisation, rationalisation and reforming. Opposite to the first two, the latter one means a deep change of system fundamentals. The new system is a way of income allocation over life cycle. The system is entirely based on individual accounts. Individuals have two accounts each. At the day of retirement amounts accumulated in each of the accounts are annualised. Pensions depend on two factors: (a) accumulated capital, and (b) age of retirement. Such old-age pension system provides its participants with high security thanks to diversification of risk between two markets, namely the labour market and the capital market, and full link between contributions and benefits. Minimum guarantee is financed by the state budget. The new system is less exposed to typical problems of that markets. Additionally, it is more resistant to political pressures. Additionally, the new system is expected to create the following externalities: change of savings structure in favour of long term savings, less incentive for early retirement, and less incentive for hiding income. The old Polish old-age system was terminated on 31 December 1998 - a new one called "Security through Diversity" was introduced on 1 January 1999. The new system covers people up to 50. The most important feature of the new system is its separation within social security. In particular, a separate contribution is paid for old-age. One part (5/8) of that contribution goes to a notional defined contribution 1st pillar individual account, the other part (3/8) goes to fully funded 2nd pillar individual account. Both elements of the system work along defined contribution regime. People between 30 and 50 have an option to pay entire contribution to 1st pillar individual account, people below 30 have their old age contributions automatically divided between the accounts.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39670/3/wp286.pd

The quest for pension reform : Poland's security through diversity

This report looks at pension reform recently undertaken in Poland, but draws conclusions with wider applicability. It examines the motivation for reform, the struggle of progressively minded experts and politicians to advance the reform agenda, the architecture of the new system, and issues arising during the transition. The final section offers tentative conclusions and lessons for other countries while highlighting the factors leading to the reform's successful launch (it is too early yet to determine the pension system's success). Factors included enlisting broad popular support for the contents of the reform package; shielding the office for pension reform from political fights, enabling it to focus on its professional tasks; intimately involving the trade unions through several consultations; and lastly, moving quickly to grasp opportunities, that is, taking advantage of the public consensus for pension reform.Environmental Economics&Policies,Pensions&Retirement Systems,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Information Technology

Restructuring and Social Safety Nets in Russia and Ukraine - Socail Security Influence on Labor Mobility: Possible Opportunities and Challenges

The paper discusses the issue of labor force mobility in a broad sense, and analyses how changes in social security policy and the structure of the social safety net (SSN) affects different aspects of labor force mobility. The text is structured as follows: Introduction, then follows Chapter 2, which provides an overview of the labor market and social safety net developments in Russian and Ukraine over the last decade, as well as discusses common features of these countries. The Chapter 3 establishes theoretical models for different aspects of labor force mobility, discusses the availability of data on Russia and Ukraine to test these models, and provides a statistical analysis of the data. The Chapter 4 discusses results of the statistical analysis. The final chapter discusses policy conclusions that can be derived from comparison of the effect of the SSN on labor mobility in these two countries, and extends them to all countries in transition.mobility of labour, social safety net, transition countries

Shaping pension reform in Poland : security through diversity

All over the world, pension systems have financing difficulties that need to be addressed. There are three ways of dealing with pension systems problems - finance it to a greater extent from general revenues, rationalize the system, or a full-fledged reform. After several years of political and professional discussions, Poland decided to follow the latter path and introduced a new defined contribution multipillar system, consisting of a public National Defined Contribution, pay-as-you-go first pillar, a funded private second pillar, and voluntary funded third pillar. The new framework covers only retirement savings, while other benefits still remain under the old defined-benefit pay-as-you-go regime. The reform was launched on January 1, 1999. This paper presents the current situation of the pension system, the struggle for pension reform in the 1990s, structure, the long-term outlook of the new pension system and the main aspects of the system design as well as first experiences from the implementation process. Long-term projection show that the new system allows for greater financial stability of the public pension scheme and increases the savings rate with a positive impact on economic growth.Pensions&Retirement Systems,Information Technology,Banks&Banking Reform,Gender and Law,Children and Youth

Pension Reform Options for Russia and Ukraine: A Critical Analysis of Available Options and Their Expected Outcomes

This paper provides the results of analyses of key problems related to pension systems and their reforms in Russia and Ukraine. The pension systems and their reforms in both countries are compared. They are also compared with the general picture observed in the OECD or selected countries belonging to that area. The analysis focuses on long-term trends rather than short-term shocks. The recent economic crisis is not covered since the analysis was mostly completed by 2008. First, we present the general picture which describes the current demographic and economic situations as well as the challenges that are being faced. Then we turn to reform options and actions already taken. We particularly focus on issues that are specific to the countries analyzed.pension reform, pension system, labour market, transition, industrial restructuring, social security, public finance, Russia, Ukraine

Social security driven Tax wedge and its effects on Employment and Shadow Employment

The aim of this paper was to analyse possible directions and magnitudes of the relationship between the social security driven tax wedge, employment and shadow employment in Russia and Ukraine. Previous results suggest a limited positive relationship between the size of the tax wedge and shadow employment and in recent years both analysed countries undertook serious steps in order to reform and to simplify their payroll tax system and consequently to reduce shadow employment. Our result suggest that the unskilled persons engaged in unregistered jobs in Ukraine and Russia are not "rewarded" with higher net earnings. It seems that, in their case, shadow employment is the way to escape unemployment and resulting poverty, rather than to evade taxes. Hence, it seems that, in this case, broadening of general employment opportunities for this group would result in a decrease in shadow employment. We also found that the effect of the SSN benefits on shadow employment was rather low in both countries. One of the explanations is the fact that SSN benefits remain largely universal, and are not sufficiently tied to former employment history and social security contribution paid.tax wedge, employment, shadow employment, transition economies

Tax Wedge and Skills: Case of Poland in International Perspective

The project intended to explain the causes of high structural unemployment in Poland. It is generally believed that the high level of unemployment in Poland is determined to a decisive degree by factors such as a restrictive labor code, high degree of unionization and/or the unemployment benefits system. The research provides macroeconomic and microeconomic evidence that the employment consequences of a tax wedge can be more severe for the low-skilled. Consequently, it argues that a high tax wedge can be potentially more harmful in countries abundant in this kind of labour. These results should send a strong message to policymakers, especially those in Central and Eastern Europe. The project was financed by a research grant provided by the Ministry of Education and Science, Poland and conducted by a team of CASE researchers: Marek Gora (coordinator), Mateusz Walewski, Artur Radziwill and Agnieszka Sowa. It was completed in the first quarter of 2006.tax wedge, labour market, employment, skills, New Member States, Poland

Social Security, Labour Market and Restructuring: Current Situation and Expected Outcomes of Reforms

The paper focuses on the social safety nets in Russian Federation and Ukraine in the view of changes on the labour market since the beginning of economic transition. We showed that many past phenomena (e.g. restructuring of the economy, wage and pension arrears, new groups at-risk-of-poverty, demographic transition) caused a need to change an old type social safety net (SSN) into the new one, better adapted to emerging more liberal economy problems. Additionally, we analysed some gender specific issues related to social security that are caused mainly by inequalities in the labour market. Differences of earnings between men and women in Russia caused by sector segregation account for seem to be more important than the gap between gender earnings attributed to the position. In Ukraine the main contributors to gross gender differential of log earnings (that equals to 32%) explained by our model are sector segregation and occupation. We also pointed out to future policy challenges in the area of social security systems in both countries. The retirement reforms introduced recently are a step in the right direction, although their impact will not be felt for a number of years. Other reforms, with more immediate results, are necessary. Social safety nets should be made more efficient and social benefits should be better targeted.Social safety net, labour market, transitional economies

Serum microRNA in patients undergoing atrial fibrillation ablation.

MicroRNAs mediate posttranscriptional gene regulation. The aim of the study was to find a microRNA predictor of successful atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation. A total of 109 patients undergoing first-time AF ablation were included. Nineteen patients were selected to undergo serum microRNA sequencing (study group). The sequencing data were used to select several microRNAs that correlated with 12-month recurrences after AF ablation. Those microRNAs were validated by digital droplet PCR in samples from remaining 90 patients. All patients underwent pulmonary vein isolation (RF ablation, contact force catheter, electroanatomical system). The endpoint of the study was the 12-month AF recurrence rate; the overall recurrence rate was 42.5%. In total, levels of 34 miRNAs were significantly different in sera from patients with AF recurrence compared to patients without AF recurrence. Six microRNAs (miR-183-5p, miR-182-5p, miR-32-5p, miR-107, miR-574-3p, and miR-144-3p) were validated in the whole group. Data from the validation group did not confirm the observations from the study group, as no significant differences were found between miRNAs serum levels in patients with and without recurrences 12 months after AF ablation