Income distribution and poverty

What are the redistribution aspects of the different pension schemes? How does the poverty risk develop among pensioners? Are statutory pensions an efficient tool for fighting against poverty amongst the elderly? If so, will this still be the case in the years to come? How will the replacement rates of the different pensioner categories develop in each pension scheme? What would be the impact of reforms on the amount of the pension benefit for various types of beneficiaries? These are a few examples of the questions the Federal Planning Bureau is trying to answer.

Methods and tools

Parallel to analysing the suitability of the different statutory pension schemes in the fight against poverty and the evolution of the poverty rates (according to various data sources), the FPB also uses the following instruments:

• the MALTESE model, used to study the repercussions of the evolution of socioeconomic behaviours as well as of social policy measures on future benefit rates within the context of population ageing;
• MIDAS, a dynamic micro-simulation model based on a representative sample survey of the population using administrative data and which gives a long-term projection of the risk of poverty, the degree of pension inequality and other indicators with regard to pension adequacy (see WP 10-10).