On 13 November, the SUSTAINWELL Horizon Europe funded project, led by Prof. Ció Patxot from the Barcelona Economics Analysis Team (BEAT), organised an on-line policy panel discussion on the design of a new perspective of the welfare policies throughout the lifecycle.
The session was chaired by Dr Nicole Mum Sim Lai, Economist at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
The panel consisted of Ms Anna Cristina D’Addio, Senior Policy Analyst at UNESCO; Ms Celine Peyron, Social Protection and Employment Policy Specialist at the ILO Social Protection Department; Prof. Shereen Hussein, Prof. of Health and Social Care Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Ms Himanshi Jain, Senior Social Protection Specialist at the World Bank Group. Drawing on their experience, experts discussed the importance of lifecycle approaches to social policy, intergenerational fairness, universal Long-Term Care (LTC) and gender inequalities while exploring the benefits of Lifecycle Notional Accounts (LNA) for flexible transitions and fiscal sustainability.
A lifecycle perspective is instrumental for the debate on the reform of welfare policies. In the context of an ageing population this was first focused on pension policies, where the effect of ageing is more sizable and visible in application of earmarked taxes addressed to finance them. The overarching goal of our proposal is to design a new integrated view of welfare policies based on the long-lasting debate on pensions, inspired in Notional Accounts (NA). The Lifecycle Notional Accounts (LNA) would include individual transparent virtual accounts (yet with some social sharing), keeping the PAYG financing (yet with some capitalisation) and incorporating automatic balancing mechanisms to foster long-term sustainability. This is part of SUSTAINWELL’s research work and is the basis for the public consultation which is still open (https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/AD8msDnbRH).
From our perspective, the proposed LNA system would define benefits that should be universal or based on needs; full coverage in Health and Education; parenting and family support, active employment policies – including lifelong learning; a new retirement pension formula – capturing lifetime contributions to market and non-market activities like care, including investment in children and possibly absence of unemployment and sickness leaves. Plus, ways to increase career flexibility and to advance benefits to facilitate child rearing period.
The results from the consultation and the online session will shape the content of an EU Policy Brief to be released at the end of the project (by January 2027) which will be made publicly available.
Click here to access our proposal