La insostenibilidad estructural del sistema de pensiones portuguésanálisis e contexto de intervención

Abstract

The evolution of the financial situation of the pensions systems is determined by the influence of demographic variables, but also by the behavior of macroeconomic variables such as employment rate. Their unfavorable projections will contribute to worsen the difficulties of the public pension systems funding for the coming decades in Portugal, jeopardizing its financial sustainability and increasing the pressure on the public finances. It intends to analyze, qualify and quantify the unsustainability of the Portuguese old age pension system, relying on two fundamental approaches, the first being the analysis of the system's unsustainability taking into account the articulation of two dimensions of unsustainability: political and technical illusion that qualify it as structural and systemic; and the second, its quantification based on two concepts - implicit debt and internal rate of return - using a model of attainment of the implicit debt under two methods: prospective method and retrospective method. Based on the results obtained it was determined a new measure of actuarial financial unbalance of the Portuguese old age pension system. Thus proving that the economic and institutional paradigm in which the system was conceived changed radically, in which the current conditions are structurally different from the past in economic, social or political terms, and that the reforms and technical options that have been implemented, particularly in the system's parameterization, are running out, this requires a long term systemic approach. At the end it will be suggested some contributions to the future sustainability of the Portuguese old age pension system.