Denmark is the country in the world with the most effective, sustainable social security system that guarantees a robust income for retirees. The triumph of the Scandinavian countries is confirmed by the second place of Holland, while the black jersey goes to Indonesia, confirming the difficulties of the emerging economies. This is the result of the Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index, the indicator created by the Australian insurance group Mercer for the assessment of the pension systems of 20 countries around the world, presented this morning in Rome during the seminar "Retirement and Assistance: proposals for an integrated approach ” organized by Assoprevidenza (Italian Association for Complementary Welfare and Assistance), Mercer Italia, Studio Actuarial Orrù & Associati, with the contribution of the Staff Pension Fund of BNL/BNP Paribas Italia. The tightness of public resources and the need not to cut social benefits highlight a sustainability problem that affects the entire Italian welfare system, both in its social security and welfare components. “The opportunity to open a reflection on the welfare model as a function of the changed economic and social framework - said Sergio Corbello, President of Assoprevidenza - is a widely debated topic. It is absolutely urgent to define the role that the institutions of social security and supplementary assistance, pension funds and assistance funds, will be able to play in the hoped-for construction of an integrated welfare system”.
THE RATING OF MERCER'S SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEMS
To evaluate the pension schemes of countries with different political-social structures and different economic conditions, Mercer used various parameters grouped into three macro-categories: adequacy, sustainability, integrity (regulations, costs, governance, etc.), which gave rise to a rating of social security systems:
1. only Denmark achieved the level of excellence;
2. systems with a healthy structure, with good general characteristics, but with areas for possible improvement: Holland, Australia, Sweden, Chile, Canada, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Singapore;
3. Countries with good social security systems, but with shortcomings that need to be resolved to maintain long-term sustainability: Germany, France, Brazil, United States, Mexico, Poland;
4. pension schemes of countries that have large areas of weakness that need to be addressed, so as not to question their effectiveness and sustainability: Japan, India, Korea, China and Indonesia. Italy is not among the countries monitored, but if it were, it would be placed between the second and third bands.
