Portability of Pension, Health, and Other Social Benefits: Facts, Concepts, and Issues

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Portability of social benefits across professions and countries is an increasing concern for individuals and policy makers. Lacking or incomplete transfers of acquired social rights are feared to negatively impact individual labor market decisions as well as capacity to address social risks with consequences for economic and social outcomes. The paper gives a fresh and provocative look on the international perspective of the topic that has so far been dominated by social policy lawyers working within the framework of bilateral agreements; the input by economists has been very limited. It offers an analytical framework for portability analysis that suggests separating the risk pooling, (implicit or actual) pre-funding, and redistributive elements in the benefit design, and explores the proposed alternative approach for pensions and health care benefits. This promising approach may serve both as a substitute and complement to bi-and multilateral agreements. Terms of use: Documents inJEL-Code: D690.

The Retirement of the Migrant Labor Force: Pension Portability and Beyond

“…Indeed, and insofar as the mobility between countries is not associated with the adequate transfers reflecting the full insurance, savings and redistributive components of Holzmann and Koettl (2011), any transition between system will lead to a non-neutral effect in terms of financial burdens for the source and origin countries. 15 In reality, no such stylized transfers existthus leading to potentially large non-neutralities for system finances.…”

“…This suggests that a more comprehensive approach is warranted, even in rather stylized models. Holzmann and Koettl (2011) provide a stimulating look at portability considerations in the broader context of social insurance benefits. They suggest an analytical framework to separate the risk-pooling, pre-funding and distributive elements of the various social insurance benefits.…”

Population, Migration, Ageing and Health: A Survey

“…https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316636404.005 impacts the fiscal cost of ageing in destination countries (see Section 3.5). While this question is receiving growing attention in the literature (see Holzmann and Koettl, 2015), our understanding of the actual role of portability is limited, even though 'bad experiences' with the portability of welfare benefits have been found to reduce the likelihood to move abroad for professional reasons, whereas 'good experiences' tend to increase it (d'Addio and Cavalleri, 2015). To understand the main difficulties involved in transferring across borders social security entitlements, note that social security benefits are characterized by both a pre-funded and a redistributive component.…”

Migration in an Ageing Europe: What are the Challenges?

“…Furthermore, the share of global migrants that are not covered by a bilateral portability agreements varies to a large extent by the income group of the sending countries: While 86% of emigrants from high income OECD countries are covered by a bilateral agreement, only 2%, 15% and 16% of emigrants from low, lower-middle and uppermiddle income countries, respectively, are covered by an agreement (Holzmann and Koettl, 2014; for a classification by geographical region of origin see Avato et al, 2010). Although these gaps might partially stem from differential destination choices of migrants, they may indicate a discrimination of migrants from other than high income countries.…”