Review of recent pension reforms in the Baltic region
EN[...] The story of pension reform in the Baltic countries parallels the larger story of similar reforms in Central, East and South-East Europe and, to some extent, Russia and ex-Soviet states. These three countries had been part of the Soviet Union and directly inherited the Soviet pension system. Countries in the Warsaw Pact often had features and complexities going back to their pre-WWII histories or had been imported from non-Socialist countries. In the three Baltic countries, the inherited Soviet system was not sustainable, particularly in their much smaller economies and without the subsidies from what is now the Russian Federation. In the initial period right after independence pensions were compressed into basically flat benefits -- with little differentiation between a minimum benefit to protect recipients from dire poverty and a maximum benefit designed to hold down costs. The 1990s saw all three countries try to unwind that compression in whole or in part, while still protecting the elderly, disabled and orphaned from destitution, and do so within very tight constraints. The decade also saw unprecedented “advice-giving” on pensions from several quarters: the World Bank, the International Labour Organization, and donor countries – in particular for this region, Sweden. [...].
