caa a22 4500 378898922 CHVBK 20180305123513.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161128e20040908xx s 000 0 eng 10.2202/1538-0653.1162 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)gruyter-10.2202/1538-0653.1162 Uebelmesser Silke 1CES, University of Munich, and CESifo, uebelmesser@lmu.de Political Feasibility of Pension Reforms [Elektronische Daten] [Silke Uebelmesser] The impending demographic crisis calls for fundamental reforms of old-age security. In a democracy, however, reforms require the support of the majority. A reform that aims at reducing the size of unfunded pension systems is supported by the young and opposed by the old. As long as the young have the majority, this reform is feasible; as soon as society becomes a gerontocracy, there is risk of further expansion. We determine for Germany, France and Italy the latest point in time at which a majority is in favour of a reform. For this, we calculate for each year the "indifference age” as the age of the cohort that is not affected by the reform and the "median age” as the age of the politically decisive cohort. In Germany, a reform can be democratically enforced until 2012. France becomes a gerontocracy in 2014 and Italy as early as 2006. ©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston Demographic crisis nationallicence pension reform nationallicence political feasibility nationallicence median age nationallicence indifference age nationallicence France nationallicence Germany nationallicence Italy nationallicence Topics in Economic Analysis & Policy De Gruyter 4/1(2004-09-08) 4:1 2004 4 bejeap https://doi.org/10.2202/1538-0653.1162 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2202/1538-0653.1162 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Uebelmesser Silke 1CES, University of Munich, and CESifo, uebelmesser@lmu.de NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Topics in Economic Analysis & Policy De Gruyter 4/1(2004-09-08) 4:1 2004 4 bejeap CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-gruyter