What indicators of achievement are available to monitor effective policy-making in ageing societies, to review sustainable progress in mainstreaming ageing, and to assess the impact of the United Nations global Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing (MIPAA) and its Regional Implementation Strategy (RIS)? How do the 56 countries of the UN-European Region across Europe, North America and Central Asia cope with population ageing? How many decades, even centuries, in time-space differences are there between countries in birth rates, infant or oldest-old age mortality, or other demographic and development indicators within the region? How does Europe differ from the US and Canada in ageing pace, fertility and migration patterns? Why have regional policy priorities such as balancing financial and social sustainability of welfare systems, extending working life, and providing and assuring quality services in long-term care have not been met so far? Are there reliable measures of material and other forms of well-being of the elderly? Are comparative advantages shifting between age groups or cohorts? How many older people are poor and what might be underlying pension policy parameters? Where do they live best and worst? Are there new forms of income volatility during retirement, redefining income adequacy as well as income certainty within the Third Age phase of life? How come that almost 80% of European pensioner households have more than four, on average up to eight income streams? What determines the quality of life and happiness or misery over the life cycle? What countries are top, what ages and groups lowest in life satisfaction? Is positive acceptance of ageing life-prolonging? Do more satisfied individuals live longer? How does health including mental health expectancy and disability-free life expectancy relate to residual life expectancies at certain ages? What explains failures and success in turning-around ever earlier labour market exit? Is the European early retirement pandemic self-inflicted, a home-made welfare .aw most difficult to cure? What are the costs of unused productive capacity, penalizing taxes on work, and pension insolvency? Are there robust sustainability indicators on implicit pension debt and other age-related unreported public liabilities? How can actuarial accounting help in calculating inter-generationally fair and stable life-cycle contribution rates and provide automatic fiscal balancing? Can notional defined-contribution (NDC)systems and sustainability factors reduce the ageing burden in the long-term? Is NDC less fair to short-lived persons than other less actuarially fair pension systems? Does general generosity in pensions also benefit the poor more than targeted safety nets or .at-rate social pension systems? What are the best fiscal gap measures available? Can generational accounting avoid the fiscal relativity inherent in conventional financial measures of sustainability? What indicators of pension entitlements and pension wealth are useful? How do changes in retirement age, pension valorization and indexation, and in residual life expectancy impact on the pension wealth of average citizens in different countries of the UN-European region?
This book edited by Bernd Marin and Asghar Zaidi includes contributions by many of the most renowned international experts on ageing addressing these queries. Bernd Marin is Executive Director of the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, Vienna, and Asghar Zaidi its Director Research. The editors were assisted by Barbara Lipszyc and Mattia Makovec, who were formerly researchers at the European Centre. The book is an outcome of the project Mainstreaming Ageing: Indicators to Monitor Implementation (MA:IMI)of MIPAA and RIS for the first review and appraisal cycle of the United Nations Regional Commission for Europe (UNECE).
