A general equilibrium evaluation of the sustainability of the new pension reforms in Italy

Most European countries have recently introduced pension system reforms to face the financial problem related to population ageing. Italy is not an exception. The reforms introduced during the Nineties (Amato Reform in 1992 and Dini Reform in 1995), even if they will produce a strong reduction in pension benefits, are generally considered not sufficient to adequately face the population ageing problem. For this reason, in 2004, the Berlusconi government introduced a new reform that increases the retirement age to 60 years from January 2008 onwards, to 61 years from 2010 and to 62 from 2014. In 2007, the left-wing government replaced this reform with a softer one that fixes the minimum retirement age at 58 from 2008. Using an applied overlapping-generations general equilibrium model with endogenous growth due to human capital accumulation, we analyse the impact of the new reforms on the macroeconomic system and in particular on the long-run sustainability of the pension system. We show that the increase in the retirement age would permit to reduce pension deficits in the short and medium run, while in the long run these reforms would become completely ineffective.