Pension Systems, Aging and Fertility in the Twenty-First Century

Increases in life expectancy combined with low fertility expedite the process of population aging for many countries across the globe. The first purpose of this study is to describe how the old-age dependency ratio of aging countries and their socioeconomic circumstances are related to public pension spending. With repeatedly measured time-series data, this study uses a longitudinal regression model to estimate public pension spending among the countries with similar aging characteristics. Also, rapid population aging has constituted a broad range of challenges in family formation and social protection systems. The second purpose of this research is to examine how parental pension benefits affect the fertility grandparents' childcare provision using six waves of panel data from South Korea. This study uses a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) controlling for heterogeneity across the six waves from 2006 to 2016.Given life expectancy at birth is unlikely to decline in the foreseeable future, fertility recuperation could alleviate the burden of rapid population aging. The third aim is to explore how public pension reforms influence fertility recuperation. First, this study reviews how five fertility recuperated countries implemented public pension reforms. Second, this study examines how the common policy directions of pension reforms correlate with fertility rates using repeatedly measured data. After navigating population aging through the old-age dependency ratio and the level of public pension spending, this study suggests that aging parents' financial stability from pension benefits contributes to childcare provision. Simultaneously, public pension reform is crucial to attaining fiscally and demographically sustainable pension schemes.