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TageskalenderTuesday, 10 February 2026

13.00-14.00 (CET) 

 

Location:

Meeting Room 4, 4th floor, PSK, Georg-Coch-Platz 2, 1010 Vienna

 

 

Please register here.

 

 

 

Reforming EU Pension Systems: Equity and Sustainability in Conflict

 

Alexia Fürnkranz-Prskawetz and Miguel Sanchez-Romero
Technical University of Vienna
Vienna Institute of Demography
Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, OeAW, Univ. Vienna)

 

Abstract:

 

Population ageing increases old-age dependency and strains pension budgets. We compare Austria and Germany (PAYG-DB) with Italy and Poland (NDC), showing how design and parameters (retirement age, accrual rules, minimum benefits) shape demographic risk and redistribution. We build an open-economy CGE model with heterogeneous life courses (education, fertility, health, employment and mortality shocks), two-gender demography, and a pension-point representation that nests PAYG-DB and NDC. Using microsimulations and Bayesian melding, we calibrate each country and assess four reforms: minimum pension benefits (MinPB), progressive benefits (PPB), delayed retirement (DR), and a sustainability factor (SF). DR and SF typically strengthen growth and financial sustainability, whereas MinPB/PPB reduce inequality but may increase contribution needs; equity and sustainability therefore may diverge.

 

 

About the presenters:

 

Miguel Sánchez-Romero is a senior researcher at the Technical University of Vienna and IIASA, and a guest researcher at the Vienna Institute of Demography at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He is editor of the Vienna Yearbook of Population Research and an associate editor of the Journal of the Economics of Ageing and the Journal of Population Research. His work examines how demographic change and intergenerational transfers influence health, labour, human capital, climate change, and economic growth. His expertise spans formal demography, life-cycle models, and overlapping-generations frameworks.

 

Alexia Fürnkranz-Prskawetz is Professor of Mathematical Economics at TU Wien, deputy group leader of the research group “Economic Demography” at VID and guest research scholar at IIASA. Her main areas of research are in the economic consequences of population and individual ageing, long run economic growth, and models on the interlinkage between the economy, environment and demography. During the last years she has worked on the resilience of pension systems in heterogenous ageing populations. She is full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, member of Leopoldina (Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften) and member of Academia Europaea.

 

 

 

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