Maintaining adequate pension levels throughout the entire retirement phase is a persistent challenge in old age protection. An often underestimated element of pension adequacy is the question of whether and how pensions in payment are adjusted to changes in the general level of earnings and to changes in the cost of living. Surprisingly, this issue has not been an object of current comparative research, and is hardly a topic in international pension reform debates. The meanwhile completed study thus contributed to closing the gaps in knowledge on indexation issues, with a focus on their social policy implications across EU welfare states.
The analysis revealed, among other things, that inadequate pension indexation rules, in particular if they are limited to mere price indexing, will not be able to make a stand against the increasing duration of retirement and the corresponding pension erosion. Such failure calls into question not only income security during retirement as a major objective of old age pensions, but also compliance with the international standards of social security set by the ILO and the Council of Europe. Reduced initial pension payment levels in combination with indexation rules neglecting adequacy could entail non-compliance with international minimum standards at some point of time.
A first version of the study was published in 2018 in the journal Sozialer Fortschritt, an updated English version in 2019 in the journal Global Social Policy.
