Les comptes notionnels, les femmes et lItalie Antoine Bozio, Institute for Fiscal Studies

NDC and the labour market in Italy Two papers from Tito Boeri – Pension Reforms and Women Retirement Plans (joint with Agrar Brugiavinni) – Is Social Security Secure with NDC? (joint with Vincenzo Galasso) Common theme – NDC reform in 1995 in Italy – Are pensions of women and unemployed at risk? – Is labour market reform a necessary complement to the NDC pension reform? Main proposal – A unique labour contract should address the problem of dual labour markets in Italy and elsewhere

Pension Reforms and Women Retirement Plans Background – Women have more gap years than men – NDC reform in 1995, from a retributive system towards a contributive system Empirical method – Dependent variable = expected retirement age – Explanatory variables = X, gap years, Δ(Peak value) Results – Gap years are significant for women – Δ(Peak value) is higher for men Higher retirement elasticity of men? Binding eligibility constraints explain why women are less reactive to changes in pension rules than women?

Comments Low retirement elasticity of women? – Interesting result given the general result on higher labour supply elasticity of women during life – Other similar results on French data (Bozio 2006, 2010) Why is this the case? – Authors suggest eligibility constraints – Is there evidence that it is really eligilibity constraint that explains lower retirement elasticity of women? – Other possible explanations (joint decision in household, income effects etc.)?

Is Social Security Secure with NDC? The paper – Italy suffers from a dual labour market, with increasing share of fixed term contract, with higher probability of unemployment spells – NDC reforms has increased the link between contributions and pensions => Those who will suffer from these unemployment spells will also suffer very reduced pensions Main analysis – NDC system is fine in itself – Interaction of NDC and dual labour market poses problem – Unique labour contract could resolve the dual labour market and thus solve the issues with pensions

Comments Italian NDC is one of a variety – Italian reform has not implemented many safeguards for career breaks – Very different from the Swedish brand of NDC – Even without a dual labour market, this is a problem Does NDC really makes the dual labour market worse – for a given level of redistribution? – Pension rights are accrued since the start of the career – Pension contributions are more valued by younger workers => increased labour supply – Lower incentives to set seniority wages Dual labour market does not need NDC to be problematic