Impact of Macroeconomic Factors on Pension Sustainability in Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesian government through BPJS Employment has implemented pension social insurance starting from 2015 with a financial management system using the Pay As You Go (PAYG) technique. Due to demographic aging and macroeconomic factors, many countries in the world have started implementing pension reforms to maintain the sustainability of pension system. This paper will focus on these two factors which are life expectancy at birth as demographic aging factor, then GDP per capita, unemployment rate and emigration as macroeconomic factors. This study aims to analyze the adequacy of Indonesian pension benefit provided by using descriptive analysis and to analyze the impact of macroeconomic and demographic aging factors on pension sustainability in Indonesia by using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) panel data regression. It is found that the amount of pension benefit provided (adequacy) does not meet the adequacy standard recommended by the ILO Convention 102 minimum standard. GDP per capita has a positive impact on sustainability of Indonesia pension system where if it increases constantly, it will maintain the pension sustainability. The unemployment rate has a negative impact on pension sustainability, so that if the unemployment rate increases, the sustainability of the pension system will decrease. Therefore, in order to maintain the sustainability of pension system, it is necessary to constantly increase GDP per capita and decrease the percentage of unemployment rate.