IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lim/wpaper/062013.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Eliciting Individual Preferences for Pension Reform

Author

Listed:
  • Yosr Abid

    (TPAD)

  • Edel Doherty

    (School of Business and Economics, National University of Ireland, Galway)

  • Darragh Flannery

    (Department of Economics, University of Limerick)

  • Cathal O'Donoghue

    (Teagasc)

Abstract

Rising costs and changing demographics require that pension system reform is an important policy goal of most developed countries. While existing literature has explored issues such as the fiscal and redistributive impact of such reforms, few studies have been undertaken to investigate the preferences of individuals for various pension reforms. This paper aims to fill this gap and uses data from a discrete choice experiment conducted in Ireland to investigate individual preferences for alternative state pension schemes. In particular, we examine preferences for characteristics of means-tested, universal or earnings-related pension systems. Our results suggest that individuals' income and age group are important determinants of their preferences and that reform of the Irish pension system is warranted towards a more generous redistributive system.

Suggested Citation

  • Yosr Abid & Edel Doherty & Darragh Flannery & Cathal O'Donoghue, 2013. "Eliciting Individual Preferences for Pension Reform," Working Papers WP062013, University of Limerick, Department of Economics, revised May 2013.
  • Handle: RePEc:lim:wpaper:062013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: ftp://s120.ul.ie/RePEc/lim/wpaper/WP062013.pdf
    File Function: Revised version, May 2013
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blamey, Russell K. & Gordon, Jenny & Chapman, Ross, 1999. "Choice modelling: assessing the environmental values of water supply options," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 43(3), pages 1-21, September.
    2. Corneo, Giacomo & Gruner, Hans Peter, 2002. "Individual preferences for political redistribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 83-107, January.
    3. Tabellini, Guido, 2000. " A Positive Theory of Social Security," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 102(3), pages 523-545, June.
    4. Liam Delaney & Francis O'Toole, 2008. "Preferences for specific social welfare expenditures in Ireland," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(12), pages 985-989.
    5. Hausman, Jerry & McFadden, Daniel, 1984. "Specification Tests for the Multinomial Logit Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(5), pages 1219-1240, September.
    6. Hughes, Gerard & Whelan, Brendan J., 1996. "Occupational and Personal Pension Coverage 1995," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number BMI110, June.
    7. Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis, 2000. "Reciprocity, Self-Interest and the Welfare State," Nordic Journal of Political Economy, Nordic Journal of Political Economy, vol. 26, pages 33-53.
    8. Guido Tabellini, 2000. "A Positive Theory of Social Security," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 102(3), pages 523-545, September.
    9. Mark Morrison & Jeff Bennett & Russell Blamey & Jordan Louviere, 2002. "Choice Modeling and Tests of Benefit Transfer," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 84(1), pages 161-170.
    10. Train,Kenneth E., 2009. "Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521747387.
    11. Hall, Jane & Viney, Rosalie & Haas, Marion & Louviere, Jordan, 2004. "Using stated preference discrete choice modeling to evaluate health care programs," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 57(9), pages 1026-1032, September.
    12. van der Heijden, Eline C. M. & Nelissen, Jan H. M. & Verbon, Harrie A. A., 1997. "Altruism and fairness in a public pension system," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 505-518, April.
    13. Leslie McCall & Lane Kenworthy, 2007. "Inequality, Public Opinion, and Redistribution," LIS Working papers 459, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    14. Nick Hanley & Robert Wright & Gary Koop, 2002. "Modelling Recreation Demand Using Choice Experiments: Climbing in Scotland," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 22(3), pages 449-466, July.
    15. Kelvin J. Lancaster, 1966. "A New Approach to Consumer Theory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74, pages 132-132.
    16. Kenneth E. Train, 1998. "Recreation Demand Models with Taste Differences over People," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 74(2), pages 230-239.
    17. Tito Boeri & Axel Börsch-Supan & Guido Tabellini, 2001. "Would you like to shrink the welfare state? A survey of European citizens," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 16(32), pages 08-50.
    18. Browning, Edgar K, 1975. "Why the Social Insurance Budget Is Too Large in a Democracy," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 13(3), pages 373-388, September.
    19. Meltzer, Allan H & Richard, Scott F, 1981. "A Rational Theory of the Size of Government," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 914-927, October.
    20. Fong, Christina, 2001. "Social preferences, self-interest, and the demand for redistribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 225-246, November.
    21. Massimiliano Mazzanti, 2003. "Discrete choice models and valuation experiments," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 30(6), pages 584-604, October.
    22. Schwarze, Johannes & Harpfer, Marco, 2007. "Are people inequality averse, and do they prefer redistribution by the state?: Evidence from German longitudinal data on life satisfaction," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 233-249, April.
    23. van Groezen, Bas & Kiiver, Hannah & Unger, Brigitte, 2009. "Explaining Europeans' preferences for pension provision," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 237-246, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pfarr Christian & Ulrich Volker, 2011. "Discrete-Choice-Experimente zur Ermittlung der Präferenzen für Umverteilung," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 62(3), pages 232-262, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pfarr, Christian, 2012. "Meltzer-Richard and social mobility hypothesis: revisiting the income-redistribution nexus using German choice data," MPRA Paper 43325, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Hayo, Bernd & Ono, Hiroyuki, 2010. "Comparing public attitudes toward providing for the livelihood of the elderly in two aging societies: Germany and Japan," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 72-80, January.
    3. Bartels, Charlotte & Neumann, Dirk, 2021. "Redistribution and Insurance in Welfare States around the World," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 123(4), pages 1116-1158.
    4. Pfarr Christian & Ulrich Volker, 2011. "Discrete-Choice-Experimente zur Ermittlung der Präferenzen für Umverteilung," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 62(3), pages 232-262, December.
    5. Kuhn, Andreas, 2012. "Redistributive Preferences, Redistribution, and Inequality: Evidence from a Panel of OECD Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 6721, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Tyran, Jean-Robert & Sausgruber, Rupert, 2006. "A little fairness may induce a lot of redistribution in democracy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 469-485, February.
    7. Andreas Kuhn, 2012. "Redistributive Preferences, Redistribution and Inequality: Evidence from a Panel of OECD Countries," NRN working papers 2012-08, The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    8. Julia Martin-Ortega & Giacomo Giannoccaro & Julio Berbel, 2011. "Environmental and Resource Costs Under Water Scarcity Conditions: An Estimation in the Context of the European Water Framework Directive," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 25(6), pages 1615-1633, April.
    9. Mulatu, Dawit W. & van der Veen, Anne & van Oel, Pieter R., 2014. "Farm households' preferences for collective and individual actions to improve water-related ecosystem services: The Lake Naivasha basin, Kenya," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 7(C), pages 22-33.
    10. Andreas Kuhn, 2012. "Redistributive preferences, redistribution, and inequality: Evidence from a panel of OECD countries," ECON - Working Papers 084, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    11. David Hollanders & Barbara Vis, 2013. "Voters’ commitment problem and reforms in welfare programs," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 155(3), pages 433-448, June.
    12. Ryo Arawatari & Tetsuo Ono, 2011. "Old-age Social Security vs. Forward Intergenerational Public Goods Provision," Discussion Papers in Economics and Business 11-26-Rev.2, Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics, revised Aug 2013.
    13. Alesina, Alberto & La Ferrara, Eliana, 2005. "Preferences for redistribution in the land of opportunities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(5-6), pages 897-931, June.
    14. Carole Ropars-Collet & Philippe Goffe & Qods Lefnatsa, 2021. "Does catch-and-release increase the recreational value of rivers? The case of salmon fishing," Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, Springer, vol. 102(4), pages 393-424, December.
    15. Marva Stithou & Yiannis Kountouris & Phoebe Koundouri, 2011. "A Choice Experiments Application in Transport Infrastructure: A case study on travel time savings, accidents and pollution reduction," DEOS Working Papers 1116, Athens University of Economics and Business.
    16. Stine Broch & Suzanne Vedel, 2012. "Using Choice Experiments to Investigate the Policy Relevance of Heterogeneity in Farmer Agri-Environmental Contract Preferences," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 51(4), pages 561-581, April.
    17. Boarini, Romina & Le Clainche, Christine, 2009. "Social preferences for public intervention: An empirical investigation based on French data," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 115-128, January.
    18. Christian Pfarr & Andreas Schmid & Morten Raun Mørkbak, 2018. "Modelling Heterogeneous Preferences for Income Redistribution–An Application of Continuous and Discrete Distributions," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(2), pages 270-294, June.
    19. Tito Boeri & Guido Tabellini, 2012. "Does information increase political support for pension reform?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(1), pages 327-362, January.
    20. Andreas Georgiadis & Alan Manning, 2012. "Spend it like Beckham? Inequality and redistribution in the UK, 1983–2004," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 151(3), pages 537-563, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H0 - Public Economics - - General
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lim:wpaper:062013. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Donal Palcic (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deculie.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.