Catherwood LibraryILR School

A study released recently by the European Commission (EC) paints a gloomy picture on the pension situation in the European Union, questioning the adequacy and sustainability of member states' national pension systems in the face of greying populations. These concerns are driven by increasing life expectancies that will by 2050 result in average life spans over five years longer than today's---and resulting increases in pension costs of as much as 30 percent---and falling birth rates that are leaving fewer workers to pay for retirees' pension. With explosive increases in most EU member states' expenditures on government-run pensions predicted to start in 2015, the alarming rate at which European employer-run pension plans are contracting, and even disappearing (see today's WIT and WIT's for March 12 and 5, Feb. 18 and 4, and Jan. 13, 2003, Nov. 25, and Sep. 16, 2002), raises the specter of a full-blown European pension crisis (see WIT for Nov. 4, 2002).