Between Equality and Efficiency: Work Incentives, Social Redistribution and Gender Equality in the Reformed Pension System, 2017

The aim of this project has been to empirically examine what effects the pension reform has on the level of performance, distribution of income and gender equality.

The project was organized in three modules:
Module A consists of a detailed description of the incentive structure generated by the new pension system in a lifespan perspective, and the possible effects it could have on the labour supply for the working age population by using data from the database “FD-trygd”.

In module B the distributional effects of the reformed pension system in a lifespan perspective were examined by using SSBs microsimulation model MOSART. Subprojects within this module examined the effects on the individual distribution of lifespan-income, the significance of family related contribution components for the distribution of household income, and lastly how the pension systems distributional effects were influenced by social differences.

In module C, qualitative interviews and a web-based survey was conducted in order to examine how individuals and couples adapt to the pension system and their comprehension of the fairness of the contribution rules and its motivational effects. The focus was especially on the family related defined benefit components such as points for caring work, inheritance of pension rights between spouses, sharing pension rights at divorce and the differentiation of pension benefits between singles and spouses/partners.

The main themes for the survey is how the population adapt to and the attitudes that exist towards the reformed pension system, emphasising the main features of the system and the performance components that is of importance for the impact of the system from a gender equality perspective. In addition to questions concerning adaptions to and attitudes toward the main features of the reformed pension system, there are several detailed questions concerning attitudes towards gender neutral divisors, the arrangement of care acquirements and towards an eventual hypothetical arrangement where the pension is divided between spouses. The survey also contains a smaller module concerning people's expectations and wishes in regard to making the decision to have children.