Second-pillar Pension: Re-reforms in Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Macedonia, Romania, and Slovakia Benefit Payouts amidst Continuing Retrenchment (ESS Working Paper No. 72)

Organization(s): ILO
Author: Elaine Fultz, Kenichi Hirose
Regions: Central Europe, Eastern Europe
Country: Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia
Year: 2018
PDF of Resource

Most analyses of Central and Eastern Europe’s (CEE) second-pension pillars focus on Hungary and Poland, the first CEE governments to establish such pillars (1997-1999) and the first to retrench them (2010-2011). However, as the regional front-runners in second-pillar creation and termination, Hungary and Poland differ in some important ways from other CEE countries that adopted this model. This paper concentrates on the other CEE second pillars, a majority of which have matured and begun to pay benefits, although only to small numbers of workers. For seven CEE countries, it describes these private benefits, compares them with public pensions and presents available evidence concerning their durability, adequacy and financing.