Altruism and fairness in a public pension system



household. In the older households, we interviewed two members of the household, if present, because
there were not so many old respondents.

The questionnaires for members of the various generations are basically the same, although some
specific generation-related questions have been asked (e.g. about children and grandchildren in the case
of an older individual). All respondents answered a number of questions about their income position,
the public and private pension contributions paid, total savings etc. In this way we obtained information
concerning the provisions for their old age. This information has partly been used to inform the
respondents about the current public pension system and the consequences of changes in the system
for their own situation. Moreover, additional information about the return on investment of public
pension contributions and the return on investments on the market has been given during the
questionnaire. The respondents have also been provided with some information on the income
distributions of the various generations.

The main part of the questionnaire consists of five different, partly hypothetical situations. In the
remaining part of this section these situations are briefly described. A summary of the situations and
the codes used in the tables are given in appendix A. In all situations people have been informed about
their own position and about the average values of the relevant variables for members of the other
generations with the same marital status. So, a single middle-aged respondent, for instance, got
information about the contribution rate, the public pension benefit, his own contribution and the average
contribution of the young. In each situation, people have been asked to evaluate this situation by means
of a grade between 1.00 and 10.00, whereby 1.00 is the lowest possible and 10.00 the highest possible
grade.

The first situation involves the present situation, also referred to as the basic situation (BS). In the basic
situation information is given on the current level of the public pension benefit, the contribution rate
and the average contribution. In BS, it is assumed that the present system does not change in the course
of time or, in other words, the current situation is considered to be the steady state situation; the effects
of ageing are neglected here. Among other things, this implies that in the basic situation it is assumed
that the current young will receive the same public pension benefit when they reach the age of 65 as
the old receive now. In addition, the contribution rate does not change.



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