Consequences on Measuring Adequacy and Sustainability in Social Security After the Pandemic

Labor markets, typically subject to ageing population, today are sensible also to the implications still deriving from the recent Covid-19 pandemic. In such scenario, it is increasingly challenging to ensure that social security systems continue to meet their objectives of adequacy of benefits and sustainability constraints. Financial sustainability and adequacy of benefits are two sides of the same matter and must be jointly considered. In the medium to long term, unsustainable pension systems may not be able to guarantee enough level of the benefits. At the same time, the financial sustainability, pursued through a compression of the benefits, may be not socially feasible. In this work the so-called Pension Wealth indicator (PW) is used to measure the adequacy on benefits provided by social security schemes, in the light of the after effects of the pandemic with a focus on the Italian workers’ protection system. PW is the ratio between the actual value, on pensionable age, of all the pension payments that are expected to be paid (generally for the entire life) and the last salary received. PW is highly related to the future mortality trends and its study may give useful information on how to face the recent shocks on expectancy of life. PW can be thought as the lump-sum needed to buy an annuity giving the same cash flow as that of a generic annuity. The PW is generally referred to old age pensioners, but the aim of this study is to present a redefinition of PW with reference to specific vulnerable workers: the Italian injured worker broken down by accidents and occupational diseases and by impairment level.