This dissertation is concerned with the retirees of Korean baby boomers who have emerged as the potential challenge to the current National Pension System. The concerns related to the inter-generational fairness refer to a stable system of provision o...
This dissertation is concerned with the retirees of Korean baby boomers who have emerged as the potential challenge to the current National Pension System. The concerns related to the inter-generational fairness refer to a stable system of provision of pension in which contributions and benefits are balanced over generations. In practice, however, the intention of the stable pension system in Korea has been challenged by the emergence of new patterns in demographic structure and economic growth: that is, the recent advances of the fast aging processes and of the stagnation of economic performance in Korea may have the consequences that the inter-generational fairness of the pension system is threatened by the depletion of financial sources caused by the imbalances between contributions and benefits over generations. For the given challenges, in order to establish a stable National Pension System, it is required to examine in depth the objective that consists of the major driving forces in the process of socio-economic and the associated institutional changes.
The benefits from the National Pension Plan and the private transfers are the two major determinants regulating the pattern of the household economic behaviors for the baby boomers before and after their retirements. In particular, Korean Baby Boomers are considered to be the current generation that takes ultimately the burden of the private transfers that have played the same role as the National Pension Plan even before it was introduced. It is important in the debates on the national pension system to consider the baby boomers’ private transfers as well as the public benefits as the characteristics of Korean National Pension.
In order to complete the examination on the concerns suggested, this dissertation makes a distinction between two groups of population in terms of before and after the baby boomers’ retirement, and then analyzes in a comparative perspective the pattern of public and private cash transfers, which are one of the household economic activities associated with the security of old ages.
The burdens imposed on the baby boomers consist of two expenditures before retirement: one for their parents generation and the other for themselves. To exam empirically the household expenditures for their retirements, this study establishes a comprehensive data set for the national pension provisions and the public and private transfers by combining into one two household surveys, NIES(National Income and Expenditure Surveys) complied by the Korea National Statistical Office and KLIPS(Korea Labor and Income Panel Sturdy) by the Korea Labor Institution, both of which are the most representative micro data for households in Korea. These two sources are to be proven to contain excellent information on the national pension provisions and the private transfers, respectively. Despite of the rich information provided by the data sources on the household expenditures for both generations, there is an inconsistency found between data sets for the two generations in the raw data due to the disparities associated with items surveyed and the points of time the surveys were made. Handling this inconsistency problem, this study reconstructs the raw data into a pseudo panel data set taking advantage of a cohort effect analysis.
In contrast to an age effect analysis, the cohort effect analysis should be useful in incorporating into data and analytical methods the inter-generational sharing such as institutional experiences different in history and the senses of supporting parents. We calculate each cohort’s (i.e., each generation’s) rate of double payments defined as the ratio of the sum of contributions to the pension and the private transfers to the total household income. The cohort analysis shows that the baby boomers have the higher rate of double payments than those for the generations before and after the baby boomers. This empirical finding implies that, considering the fact that their burdens of pension contributions imposed is not higher than those of the other generation, the problem of baby boomers’ retirement is affected by the private transfers that represent the characteristics of the mechanism in which children supports their parents in Korea.
When the private transfers are incorporated, the coverage for the retired baby boomers and the later generations is also expected to show a different figure in an inter-generational comparison than the result from an analysis with pension benefits only. In 2007, the Korean congress revised the National Pension Act in such a way that the pension benefits that will be conferred in the future shall be reduced gradually, while the current contributions shall be maintained. The comparison of the wealth for retirement incorporating the national pension benefits only between baby boomers and the post baby boomers shows that the former has the higher coverage than that of the other in terms of total value. In contrast, when we consider a total value of the wealth for retirement, including both the pension benefits and private transfer incomes available for each generation during the period of eligible for a participant to re receives the pension benefits, which are set by law and affected by life expectancy, it is shown that the post baby boomers have higher level of coverage than the baby boomers do.
To sum, it would be safe to say that the baby boomers in Korea pay more before their retirement and are covered less after their retirement.
Key words: Baby Boom Generation, National Pension Plan, Private Transfers, Cohort Analysis, Psuedo Panel Data