DIFFERENTIAL MORTALITY AND THE DESIGN OF THE ITALIAN SYSTEM OF PUBLIC PENSIONS

This paper considers the issue of actuarial fairness of the new Italian public pension system in view of the recent trends in old-age mortality and the survival differences by gender, birth cohort and region of residence.3 Section 2 reviews the secular trends in elderly mortality in Italy, separately for men and women, and draws some implications for long-run demographic projections. It also considers regional differences in survival and their evolution over the last three decades. Section 3 evaluates the impact, on the conversion factors introduced by the Dini reform, of a further decline in elderly mortality over the next few decades, focusing on the period when the reform will be fully phased in. It also computes the conversion factors using a close approximation to the unknown formula employed in the Dini reform but allowing for gender- and region-specific survival probabilities. The distance between the original conversion factors and those obtained by allowing for differential survival across socio-demographic groups provides a quantitative assessment of the implicit redistributive impacts of the reform. Finally, Section 4 offers some conclusions.