Many social security institutions are in the process of reforming their disability benefit programmes in an effort to reduce historically high numbers of beneficiaries on the rolls.

This brief will discuss the causes of this high recipient rate and will describe current disability benefit reform measures aimed at addressing the problem. It will then explore the policy reasons behind these different reform measures and examine how different types of reform measures might best address those policy concerns.

The failure of international trade law to liberalize labour stands in stark contradiction to the liberalization of other fundamental economic inputs, and undermines the vision for a globalized world. 

In the new society, the individual and the family are subject to substantial increases in uncertainty in the economic environment. These are caused by globalization, technological changes, shifts in global power structures, and developments in labour and family relations.

There exists a widespread conviction that pension protection, along with many other social benefits, is slowly being eroded as responsibility for insurance and the associated costs are shifted steadily from government and employers to individual citizens and their family members.

But was there really a ‘golden age’ of pension protection? If so, what are the causes that undermined these guarantees, and what are the policy parameters and defining characteristics that have shaped pension policies during the last couple of decades?