Bernard Casey will giving a seminar at the Institute of Economics of Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest on 26 May on 'The implications of the economic crisis for pensions and pension policy in Europe'.

Population ageing and pressures on public finances have resulted in government pressing the extension of working lives. The economic crisis has meant that some people feel they cannot afford to retire but also that many employers are cutting back on their workforces. Bernard Casey will be giving a seminar on Wednesday 18 May 2011 as part of the University of Warwick Festival of Social Sciences in which he will provide insights into current research on issues relating to post-retirement-age working.

Bernard Casey is a Principal Research Fellow in IER who works on the economic implications of societal ageing. He has been a senior economist at the OECD and is currently a consultant to the European Commission with respect to its proposed Year of Active Ageing. With Professor Noel Whiteside from the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick, he authored an article for Parliamentary Brief (May 2011) entitled “The pensions web which Mr Webb has to unweave”.

Bernard Casey addressed this issue in a response to the European Commission’s Green Paper Towards adequate, sustainable and safe European pension systems. Longer working could the growth in public expenditure on age pensions.  It could also reduce the need for those cuts in the value to pension benefits that have already been legislated for and that will otherwise take effect over the coming decades.

Bernard's repsonse can be accessed here: Ensuring adequacy and sustainability – the impact of raising the age of entitlement to an old-age pension.

Bernard Casey will be presenting on ‘The implications of the economic crisis for pension policy in Europe’ at the Policy Research Workshop for the Centre for European Studies, Carleton University on 26-27 August 2010.  More information is available on the Centre for European Studies website.