The Application of Institutional Contract to Pension Reform in Taiwan
Heng-Ying Lai*
Abstract
The government’s pension scheme has been playing the most important role in Taiwan’s social insurance system. This study seeks to a workable solution to keeping the pension scheme from going broke because of its finance crisis. A proposed pension reform focuses on paying more into the pension, delay of retirement age and a cut in pension benefits. Constitutional justification has been made for paying more into pension funds and delaying retirement age from other jurisdictions and cited as an example by the local academia. However, there have been constitutional arguments against a cut in pension benefits. In japan, the theory of “institutional contract” is adopted to justify the cut in private pension benefits and this approach may be taken as a reference when trying to resolve the same issue in Taiwan.
Keywords: pension, pension reform, institutional contract
* Associate Professor, Department of Government and Law, National University of Kaohsiung.