Social Impact of the Crisis - Demographic Challenges and the Pension System

This briefing looks into the wider context of the financial and economic crisis 2008/09 with view of the already existing demographic expectations and challenges in the EU, specifically the state of the diverse EU pension systems and the extra impact of the crisis on the already existing challenges. It has three parts. Section 1 describes differences and similarities between the challenges of the crisis and of population aging. Section 2 quantifies the impact of the crisis on funded and unfunded pension systems. Section 3 takes a long-run perspective on which pension policies are necessary with or without future crises which are certain to happen again in some form or another.