The Economic Growth Factor in the Concept of Sustainable Reforms of National Pension Systems in the Eastern Europe Region

Abstract

The international systems of indicators for the comparative assessment of the sustainability component do not always cover the Eastern European region, which can be considered an obstacle to the global understanding of the problems and possible solutions in the reform of national pension systems. At the same time, in the conditions when pension systems face the strong influence of several factors, and the operation and administration of national pension systems represent a challenge for most countries in the Eastern European region, it is important to determine the system of indicators, which would ensure a sustainable reform thereof. The article presents views on the systematization of the factors that influence the sustainable reforms of the national pension systems and the results of the study on the relationship between the factor of economic growth and the aging of the population, carried out for 10 countries in the Eastern European region and a chronological series 2010-2021. The data obtained on the correlation coefficient between economic growth and the rate of the elderly population confi rm recent research by other authors, carried out for 15 European countries during the same period, according to which the rate of the elderly population has a medium-level impact on economic growth for at least half of analyzed countries and for another third of countries there is no relationship between the economy and the 65+ population. The strength of the relationship between the economy and the elderly population in the period 2010-2021 was very weak in all countries in the Eastern European region. Moreover, in the Czech Republic and at the level of the region, this dependence could be considered as non-existent, the values of the correlation coefficients being close to 0. Only for Slovakia the correlation coefficient shows a slightly stronger but weak and opposite dependence, as for Belarus, Moldova and Russia. The author’s analysis does not validate the increasing burden of population aging in Eastern European economies, which means the lack of need to reorient public social spending towards higher age-related spending in the analyzed period. The study confirms the contradictory nature of the factor of raising the retirement age, thus, it could be removed from the list of beneficial factors of sustainable pension reform, and the cause-and-effect relationship between economic growth and the rate of the elderly population could be neglected. This study complements the data on the differences between Eastern European countries and Western and Northern European countries and would have an impact on policies to reform national pension systems, especially in the context of the political paradigm that supports the concept of a negative impact of aging on economic growth.