Opinions Concerning Pension Systems: An Analysis of Dutch Survey Data

Although politicians in welfare states pay increasingly more attention to financial problems that may arise due to the ageing process, little is known about the opinions of the citizens with respect to the social security system and the ageing process. This paper focuses on opinions about public and private pension systems in the Netherlands. The data have been obtained by means of a large-scale questionnaire, carried out in January 1994. Opinions about several aspects of the social security system, ordered both for the sample and per generation, are dealt with in the first part of the paper. The second part examines the evaluations of several (hypothetical) pension schemes that have varying income effects for different generations. The evaluations are compared between and within generations. The analysis suggests that in some cases individuals of different generations have varying opinions about current and future pension systems. In addition to income, altruistic feelings seem to play a role.