Lecture 14 – Old age and Survivor's Pensions, Unemployment Benefits and
Social Assistance
Intro video lecture
Remaining risks of discussion
o Old age and survivorship
o Employment social assistance
He made links between the 4 risks
Some relations between risks (relation old age & survivorships – pensions) (employment & social
assistance; desire to find work, availability of work)
- Social insurance (employment)
- Social assurance
o Focus on similar issue of (loss of) income out of work
Old age and survivorship
- Linked through pension
- Sometimes taken together in one pension scheme
Introductory remarks:
- Talk about old age risk which is sometimes labelled as retirement
o Too old to work > lose income out of work > income needs to be replaced
- Some countries focus on age person is eligible for work (doesn’t matter if they still can work
or not)
- In other scheme (more Bismarckian) work is relevant, and especially retirement from work is
crucial for calculation of benefit
- 3rd alternative way; looks at seniority > active long enough > expected to retire from it and
are entitled to benefit
- In reality most schemes are mixture of old age / retirement / seniority
Originally; when people retired people would also die > had some relative living survivor at danger of
losing income (traditionally it was the man who died and left the woman behind who was dependent
on his income)
When person comes to die > pension disappears > survivor has no benefit
o Survivorship scheme > (part of) left over pension was paid to survivor
o Therefore often taken together with pension scheme
Survivorship however can also happen outside of pension scheme > therefore sometimes
taken out of pension system
Survivorship evolved; first only for widows, later also for widowers > however still issue for
age (pension was different for men (65) and women (60)) age of survivorship was
therefore also different
o This age difference was often in advantage for women
Unemployment
- Risk of losing job and income
- Getting income replacement
- Perspective of finding new job
Risk is often focussed on wage earners (employees)
Many of those schemes were designed around employees and workers and that they
should’ve been working a certain period of time (so not that you get a benefit after first day
of employment)
, oOften based around organisation of dismissal
Is employee to be blamed for dismissal; if yes can be sanctioned through
being ineligible for unemployment benefit
Often on conditions of e.g. looking for new work
Social assistance
- Deals with poverty
- Sometimes faced when working (fulltime)
o Expected to earn enough to live; however sometimes this is not the case and people
still rely on poverty schemes to make sure they can meet ends at end of the month
- For people looking for job and don’t have a job (overlap with unemployment)
- Taking care of people who could never enter unemployment scheme
o Self-employed
o Don’t fulfil entitlement commissions (haven’t been working long enough, e.g. after
study)
- Overlap to cover up needs for employment
- More than protecting people against unemployment (also poverty)
- Dealing with people who aren’t supposed to work / cannot work yet (e.g. refugees who
haven’t yet been approved as refugee; people who are retired but have too low of a
retirement pension; deal with crisis situations, e.g. corona crisis, earthquakes sometimes
people need assistance in sense of services instead of in sense of money)
- Most of the time universal; sometimes complementary with targeting specific groups
Video lectures – Old Age
Three philosophies of old age
Not conditions etc. but philosophies; philosophy of loss of earnings
- Retirement-pension
o Cover presumption of loss of earnings capacity
o Presume people cannot earn income out of work anymore; thus provide them with
an income
o It’s logical that these people stop working; because that’s your presumption more or
less
- Old age pension (in strict sense)
o Provide benefit because you’ve reached a certain age
o age is determining
o don’t look into activity of person; capability of person doesn’t play much of a role
o doesn’t mean they have to stop working
- Seniority pension (not as important; disappeared completely)
o Reward number of years of participation in social pension system
o E.g. You’ve been working for 40 years, so you get pension; age doesn’t matter, if you
continue working doesn’t matter
o Only exists for special groups; e.g. military
Pilot for army with x km of flight on resume qualifies for pension, whatever
his age might be
Link between old age pension as a concept and the Beveridgean approach
Coverage of population in general; doesn’t matter if they work or don’t work
Link between Bismarckian approach and retirement-pension system
In a broad sense
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