Access, coverage and generosity of the pension system in Portugal since 1980 : construction and analysis of some indicators

Abstract

Nowadays, Social Security plays a vital role for accomplishing social justice and human rights protection among societies. Notwithstanding, several questions may be raised regarding the adequacy of the system and its financial capacity to cover citizens’ needs, under its welfare functions. This paper aims to scrutinise the evolution of the Portuguese Public Pension Scheme since 1980 and provide more details about the conditions underlying its access and coverage among the population. For that purpose, it embraces the methodology applied in Ageing and Pension Adequacy Reports, so as to properly depict the extent to which it encompasses both contributory and capitalization regimes, poverty reduction and prevention, income maintenance and pensions duration, along with the political, juridical and economic evolution verified. Despite the system’s reasonable maturity, embracing the general population and guaranteeing pension rights adjusted to the contributory careers of new pensioners, there persist several limitations. Besides the ageing phenomena and the drastic effect it displays in the demographic pyramid, there prevail several challenges such as the risk of instability in labour market access over a lifetime, high levels of income inequalities generated, paucity and deficiency coverage of elders’ needs, unequal poverty prevention and mitigation and earnings maintenance. Nevertheless, these concepts remain significantly unexplored and misunderstood, given the lack of data available and the wide complexity of this sphere.