| Abstract: | The essay discusses the general issues of labor market incentives and of adapting to the trend to longer lives, including legislated adaptations in Chile, Italy, Sweden, and the US. For the Netherlands there are two concrete proposals – that the AOW fund hold a diversified portfolio and that workers have the option of delaying the start of AOW benefits in order to receive larger benefits for themselves and surviving spouses. Three issues are identified for evaluation and monitoring: whether widow benefits from private pensions might become too small in the future (given the introduction of choice between higher worker benefits and survivor benefits), whether final-pay pensions should be modified to indexed career-average pensions (to improve labor mobility and fairness), and whether there should be some automatic adjustments for cohort life expectancy. |
