The Current Situation of Retirement Income Provisions in Japan: Social Security Pension Schemes and Corporate Pension Plans

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Japan has been faced with rapid population ageing for decades. This has continuously reduced thelevel of social security pension benefits. Based on this it is often said that corporate pension plansshould play a wider role forward in providing retirement benefits. However, we also have to knowthat there is a limit to what corporate pension plans can do in place of the social security pensionschemes. In this paper we extract lessons from the history of social security pension schemes in ourcountry and try to define the roles of corporate pension plans and social security pension schemes.
In conclusion we should keep adequacy of social security pension benefits even if the contributionrate becomes a bit higher. Corporate pension plans just enrich people’s life in retirement. We haveto remember that corporate pension plans were not certain means for reducing the poverty in oldage and that for this reason social security pension schemes by social insurance were invented.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 Association of Life Insurance Companies., "Yearly statistics"

2 Sakamoto, J., "Roles of the social security pension schemes and the minimum benefit level under the automatic balancing mechanism" PBSS and IAAHS sections of the International Actuarial Association 2008

3 Sakamoto, J., "Role of the actuary in the process of unifying the social security pension schemes in Japan" 2007

4 Clark, R., "Population ageing, intergenerational transfers and the macro-economy" Edward Elgar 2007

5 Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications., "National survey of family income and expenditure in 2004"

6 Sakamoto, J., "Japan’s pension reform" World Bank 2005

7 Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Actuarial subcommittee of the Social Security Council., "Fact sheet on social security pension schemes"

8 Pension Fund Association., "Fact book on corporate pensions"

9 Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare., "Comprehensive survey on employment conditions"

10 Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare., "Comprehensive survey of living conditions of the people on health and welfare"

11 Social Insurance Agency., "Annual Report of FY 2006" Social Insurance Agency 2008