Survivorship Pensions in the Middle East and North Africa Region : Current Situation, Costs and Options for Reforms

La version Working paper s'intitule "Survivorship Pensions in the Middle East and North Africa Region Current Situation and Innovative Options for Reforms"The purpose of the survivor's pension is to create rights for young and old age dependants. In the case of developed countries, the system deals essentially with the spouse survival. In the case of MENA countries, the survivor’s pensions scheme provides a wider perspective of coverage and is extended to protect children, brothers, sisters, dependant parents and grand-parents according to specific criteria. Two objectives of survivor's pensions can be distinguished. On the one hand, the survivor's pensions aim at providing a minimum of resources when the widow(er) could not acquire any other sources of income. In this case, the widow survivor's pension is provided to the most modest households in order to help them from plunging in extreme poverty. This context prevails widely in MENA countries, where poverty is high and the level of dependancy is also prominent. On the other hand, a second perspective considers the survivor's pensions as a pension right to the widow (er) with the aim of maintaining her/his former standard of living. Developed countries are particularly concerned by this environment. This paper propose an analysis of the impact of pension reforms, particurlarly, of the survirvorship pensions reforms on the individual situations of retirees. The analysis focuses on Moroccan pension system and will consider a representative sample of members of the main schemes in Morocco.ou