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At the beginning of December 2023, Law no. 360/2023 regarding the public pension system. This law provides for the principle of insurance stability in the public pension system - according to which an additional number of points is granted for the contributory contribution period achieved over 25 contributory years. It also establishes three types of working conditions in which the activity of insured persons from the public pension system can be carried out: normal, difference and special. The new pension law expands the definition of assimilated periods. The period of granting the disability pension is no longer considered assimilated. Art. 46 para. 2 stipulates that persons insured in the public pension system who meet the conditions for registration to the pension can opt for maintaining the activity, annually, with the consent of the employer, until reaching the age of 70. The mechanism by which those who want to cover periods in which they did not contribute to pensions will continue to exist and will, in principle, have the same rules. The amount of the pension is determined according to art. 83 para. 1, by multiplying the total number of points achieved by the insured by the value of the reference point. the beneficiaries of the monetary rights granted by the territorial pension houses established on the territory of other states, hereinafter referred to as non-resident beneficiaries, have the obligation to transmit semi-annually, at the latest at on March 31, respectively until September 30 of each year, a life certificate. The recalculation decisions on the new pension law, communicated to pensioners already on August 16, a process that will continue until August 30, 2024, are based on provisions that will enter into force on September 1, 2024. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2023 Czech presidential elections, characterized by high turnout and the victory of retired General Petr Pavel in a run‐off against former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, marked a significant shift in the country's political landscape. These elections were marked by intense debates on candidates' backgrounds and foreign policy orientations, highlighting voters' preference for pro‐Western ideals. Meanwhile, the Cabinet of Petr Fiala witnessed four ministerial changes affecting the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry for European Affairs, the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport, and the Ministry of Agriculture. Several important legislative changes occurred in 2023. Notably, the pension amendment incited robust debate and opposition activity. Furthermore, the government's consolidation package, aimed at economic stabilization and public budget reduction, sparked protests, reflecting broader societal concerns over funding and labor conditions in schools and hospitals. The year ended with national mourning following a tragic mass shooting at Charles University in Prague. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, the Swedish government declared itself the first feminist government in the world. Indeed, the country has been successful in promoting gender equality, yet many retired women, particularly in rural areas, live on an income below the EU poverty line. Based on analysis of Sweden’s pension system, the country’s commitment to gender equality, and interviews with low-income women pensioners in rural Sweden, this article explores why some women end up living in poverty in later life. The article demonstrates how the Swedish pension reform of the 1990s has generated a structural lag; today’s older women have lived during times that were radically different from the world nowadays, yet their pensions are based on forward-looking ideals. Consequently, today’s older women have become “collateral damage” (Bauman 2011) of securing a new form of pension system, and seemingly also neglected in the state’s promise of ensuring gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article "The Argonauts: One Hundred Years of the California Rule" published in the ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law discusses the California Supreme Court's journey in navigating government pension law, drawing parallels to the Greek myth of the Argonauts. The court's decisions have shaped the California Rule, which limits pension benefit changes after the first day of employment. The article proposes reimagining pensions as daily contracts to align with traditional contract law principles and address the ongoing pension debt crisis. It also highlights the importance of procedural considerations, such as the lack of intermediate appellate decisions in public pension cases, to ensure sound judicial decision-making. [Extracted from the article]

The article is an imprint of the "GesR" Health Law Journal. It contains information about the publisher Dr. Otto Schmidt KG, the editor RA Prof. Dr. Martin Rehborn, RA Dr. Rudolf Ratzel, and RA Prof. Dr. Jens Prütting, LL. M. oec. Information is also provided about the editorial staff, production, advertising, and sale of the journal. The subscription price and frequency of publication are also mentioned. The ISSN numbers of the journal are provided, and reference is made to copyright and publishing rights. The text contains information about various publications and offerings of the Otto Schmidt publishing company. It is noted that all contributions and illustrations are protected by copyright and written consent from the publisher is required for any use not expressly permitted. Instructions for authors and contributors are also provided. In addition, various publications of the publishing company are presented, including a procedural form book and a labor law work. Information is also given about a part-time master's degree program in medical law and a book on labor law in company pension schemes. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of FinanzRundschau is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

For the first time in the history of South African pension laws, a system is proposed that will enable pension fund members to access a portion of their pension benefits while still actively employed. The proposed system seeks to provide pension fund members with financial relief without requiring them to quit their jobs due to financial strain. This paper commends the government's initiative in response, among others, to the financial problems caused by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. This paper argues, however, that despite the potential beneficial effects the system may have on pension fund members, it may introduce new challenges that pension fund stakeholders have never faced before. This paper aims to highlight a potential defect in the proposed system, particularly in cases where pension benefits are included in the joint estate of a pension fund member. South African customary marriages, whether or not they are registered, are by default in community of property. The pension benefits of a member who is a spouse in these marriages form a part of the joint estate. This paper examines and proposes solutions to the challenges that the proposed system may present to spouses in unrecorded customary marriages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fundamental principle of law is that courts stand by their decisions. Under the principle of stare decisis, judicial action strives for stability and coherence by setting precedents for the future in deciding current cases. This Article presents an original inquiry into the overruling expression and criteria for stare decisis in the public pension reform context of California's constitutional contract law. While there is a lively debate among commentators and judges about the role of stare decisis theory and doctrine in federal law, our study extends that conversation to state law for the first time. We develop a new decision-making framework by synthesizing state and federal decisions to provide a fresh perspective on the perennial problem of whether cases should be settled or settled right. Utilizing the proposed decisional model, we analyze if the Supreme Court of California should retain or repudiate its super pension contract. This contract--commonly called the "California Rule"--is the primary obstacle to pension reform under the Contract Clause. The rule has contributed to the state's pension crisis by granting protection of future accruals on the first day of government employment. Because the California Rule has been widely adopted in other jurisdictions that are similarly struggling to manage debilitating pension debt, the foregoing evaluation of precedent's durability has important and far-reaching implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past quarter century, Congress has enacted several major reforms for retirement plans and individual retirement accounts, usually with large bipartisan, bicameral majorities. Legislators have claimed each time that the reforms would improve retirement security for millions of Americans, especially rank-and-file workers. But the supposed interest in helping lower-income and middle-income earners has been a stalking horse for the real objective of expanding tax subsidies for higher-income earners. The legislation has repeatedly raised the statutory limits on contributions and benefits, delayed the start of required distributions, and weakened statutory non-discrimination rules--all to the benefit of affluent workers and the financial-services companies and service providers that collect fees from retirement savings. The result has been spectacular growth in the retirement accounts of higherincome earners but modest or even negative growth in the accounts of middle-income and lower-income earners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Çalışma ve Toplum is the property of Calisma ve Toplum and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Pension inequality resulting from fragmented arrangements among different population groups – such as public sector employees, enterprise workers, rural residents, and urban informal workers – has become an essential obstacle to China's socioeconomic development. This commentary analyzes the impacts of the 2015 pension reform on the inequality within China's pension system. We claim that the unification of pension rules should be considered the greatest achievement in mitigating pension inequality. However, the integrated pension rules do not necessarily reduce gaps in pension opportunity and benefits among groups because of differentiation in their labor incomes as well as pension attributes. In addition, although the pension structures were flattened at the basic level, structural disparities exist at the supplementary level, strengthening unequal pension benefit outcomes. We argue that the 2015 pension reform enables public sector employees' privileged status to continue while enterprise employees and rural residents and urban informal workers remain at the pension system's margins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we analyse a large sample of Egyptian social pension data which covers, by law, the policyholder's spouse, children, parents and siblings. This data set uniquely enables the study and comparison of pairwise dependence between multiple familial relationships beyond the well-known husband and wife case. Applying Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation techniques with the two-step inference functions for margins (IFM) method, we model dependence between lifetimes in spousal, parent–child and child–parent relationships, using copulas to capture the strength of association. Dependence is observed to be strongest in child–parent relationships and, in comparison to the high-income countries of data sets previously studied, of lesser significance in the husband and wife case, often referred to as broken-heart syndrome. Given the traditional use of UK mortality tables in the modelling of mortality in Egypt, the findings of this paper will help to inform appropriate mortality assumptions specific to the unique structure of the Egyptian scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pensions at the European level have been, since the sovereign debt crisis, affected by several decision-making innovations. Retirement policy has been embedded in the European Semester, which strengthened the hitherto inadequate European socioeconomic policy coordination mechanisms. Given that the additional powers bestowed upon the Commission were qualified, a supranational response followed. With the effect of strengthening its rational-legal authority, in line with neo-functionalist spillover assumptions, evidence-based standards have been progressively applied to EU retirement policy formation. This innovative turn warrants the employment of a policy analysis theoretical framework. In particular, the article applies the concepts underpinning policy evaluation to the study of pensions within the Semester. Using a mixed-methods approach, which combines case study with statistical analysis, and following a novel in-depth coding of country-specific recommendations and Country Reports, this article argues that member states' pensions are now assessed within a structured, formal and polycentric evaluation cycle. This has been gradually constructed by increasing the coherence between the yearly interim ex post evaluations of pension policy output (the Country Reports) and the final ex post evaluations of pension policy outcomes (the Ageing and Pension Adequacy Reports) that are published every 3 years. The result is a streamlined, technocratic, knowledge-based approach to retirement policy at the supranational level. Even though the generation of technical knowledge is no substitute for toothless conditionality, greater reliance on evidence is aimed at socializing national decision-makers and may eventually influence their policy choices. The unconventional pension evaluation cycle that sprung up around the Semester may, hence, serve as a model applicable to other socioeconomic policy domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers texts written or sold by disabled Civil War veterans for their economic support as an understudied precursor to twentieth-century disability memoir and an instructive subgenre of the literature of poverty. These so-called mendicant texts challenged contemporary disability representations in both "empty sleeve" discourse and in US pension law, drawing attention to how economic structures shaped the experience of living with an impairment and to the social determinants of poverty. At the same time, mendicant texts stopped short of arguing for a wholesale reorganization of society; thus, they testify to the partial and uneven postbellum evolution in understandings of disability and poverty as social categories. If mendicant texts tell us about the historical circumstances of disability and its intersection with economic suffering, they also offer productive challenges to scholars studying life writing from the perspectives of US literary studies, disability studies, and poverty studies. While mendicant narratives' ambiguous authorship and departures from the truth trouble expectations of authentic and resistant self-representation, these elements offer new insights into the rigid constraints upon acceptable disability presentation in this era, as well as the creative choices made by veterans who peddled literature in order to survive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Collective Defined Contribution (CDC) pension schemes are a variant of collective pension plans that are present in many countries and especially common in the Netherlands. CDC schemes are based on the pooled management of the retirement savings of all members, thereby incorporating inter-generational risk-sharing features. Employers are not subject to investment and longevity risks as these are transferred to plan members collectively. In this paper, we discuss policy related to the proposed introduction of CDC schemes to the UK. By means of a simulation-based study, we compare the performance of CDC schemes vis-à-vis typical Defined Contribution schemes under different investment strategies. We find that CDC schemes may provide retirees with a higher income replacement rate on average, together with less uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives This study reports the findings of the first cross-national survey experiment on the effects of information on the expected retirement age. Given the drawbacks of unrealistic retirement expectations, the study examines the impacts of nonpartisan information about future demographic aging and forecasted pension benefit levels. Methods An online survey experiment was conducted in the United States, Germany, and Spain in 2018 using an internet access panel. We assigned respondents to 2 random treatments: one citing the change in the projected share of the population older than 65 years (demographic treatment) and another citing the projected change in pension replacement rates (benefits treatment), both for 2015–2040. Treatment effects on the expected retirement age are reported. Results The benefits treatment has a strong influence on retirement expectations. In the United States, respondents informed of the expected decline in pension replacement rates expect to retire 2 years later than respondents not informed of the decline. In Spain, this treatment leads to an approximately 9-month postponement of expected retirement, while no significant effect is found in Germany. In addition, the demographic treatment does not affect retirement expectations in the countries studied. Respondents in all countries informed of future population aging do not show different expected retirement ages than respondents not given this information. Discussion People's retirement expectations are sensitive to information on future changes in pension generosity but not to information on population aging. The results suggest information campaigns focused on declining pension replacement rates may help extend working lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Iustitia is the property of Universidad Santo Tomas, Bucaramanga and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the state of single-employer and multiemployer pension plans for the period 1980s to 2020 with particular attention to funding, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation benefit guarantees and intervention procedures, financial status, participant experience, employer premiums, and benefit payments. It then shifts to congressional efforts to save the plans beginning with the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 and continuing through the complex development of the HEROES Act with its conflicting EPPRA and GROW Act provisions. Due to an unresolved conflict between the Senate Republicans and the House Democrats, the pension provisions were removed from the compromise legislation that was signed into law at the very end of the Trump Administration. The matter will be further addressed by the new Democratic-controlled Congress and the Biden/Harris Administration. However, that may take a while. The issues are complicated and the Congress may be busy with more pressing matters for some time to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the College of Law / Al-Nahrain University is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The large excess fraction of difficult-to-diagnose injuries that occur on a Monday was originally thought to reflect employees’ use of workers’ compensation to cover weekend injuries. Evidence has not necessarily supported this notion, however. Substantial reforms in California in 2004 have made filing false workers’ compensation claims more difficult and less attractive because of reduced benefits. The author empirically tests the effects of the reforms using 2002 to 2006 workers’ compensation claims from a nationwide firm that contracts temporary staffing, an industry with pronounced asymmetric information. He finds strong evidence that claim rates and costs fell following the reforms, and that the fraction of claims on Monday for difficult-to-diagnose injuries dropped by 7 percentage points in California—with no change for the firm’s branches in other states. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that false claims explain a part of the Monday effect, at least in industries with substantial asymmetric information. That being said, when taking into account the effects of the reforms on claim costs and overall claim rates, the excess number of Monday claims makes up less than 4% of the cost reductions after the reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the turn of the millennium, Germany and the United Kingdom experienced the most severe crises of their pension systems since the Second World War. In both cases, politicians reacted with extensive reforms. The political debates in each country revolved around the notion that demographic ageing was at the root of the crises. Hence, the call for greater intergenerational equity became the key justification of fundamental pension-system reform. But a comparative historical analysis reveals that it is a vast oversimplification to blame the pension crises entirely on demographic ageing. In fact, a combination of other factors—which varied widely between the UK and Germany—far overshadowed the 'demographic time-bomb' as the driving force behind the crises. A prime factor in the UK was the declining value of the Basic State Pension and the growing importance of means-tested benefits, along with the decline of company pension schemes. By contrast, the problems facing the pension system in Germany primarily arose from rising unemployment, the systematic early retirement of millions of eastern Germans and the high costs of German unity, which were largely borne by the social-security system. Furthermore, in the debate on Germany's ability to remain a thriving centre for business and industry, rising pension contributions were widely held responsible for declining competitiveness. In both countries, politicians seized upon the explanatory model of demographic ageing because it made sweeping reforms of the pension system appear the consequence of a quasi-natural process, and created a welcome opportunity to divert attention from socio-political blunders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the important points an advisor should keep in mind while dealing with a client with pensions. It is discussed that the advisors holding an Australian financial services licence (AFSL) and those who do have an AFSL must ensure that the client pays annual minimum payments before June 30, 2023 so as to avoid potential severe consequences.

The quality of democracy in our economy depends on the governance of capital, but Europeans are still deprived of real voice over their retirement money: the single biggest source of capital in the 21st century. This paper outlines three major problems facing EU pensions: precarious retirement, escalating inequality, and mounting climate damage. These problems start with the places where we work, the institutions that control our retirement savings, and the votes on shares that come with them. The central argument is that pensions will only be sustainable once they are democratically, prudently, and loyally governed. First, member states have wide experience with co-determination in capital funds, which can inform the basis of minimum standards in EU law for 'pension fund democracy'. Second, a growing number of investment rules draw upon Member States' fiduciary duties and standards for prudence or care; but, these do not yet codify the requirement that beneficiaries' environmental, social, and governance preferences are followed. Third, votes on shares - bought with pension fund assets - are still being cast by banks and asset managers who manage 'other people's money'. This is a serious problem because banks and asset managers have interests that systematically conflict with the ultimate investors: they vote in companies on other people's money and, at the same time, sell financial products (e.g., pensions) to those companies. The problems are soluble with careful amendments to existing policy that ensure elected representatives of pension beneficiaries are the sole determinants of voting policies, with prudence and no conflicts of interest. A draft EU Directive, based upon emerging best practice, is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As of 2021, the world is facing several crises that will greatly impact on the ways in which our societies are shaped. This article provides a brief overview of the trends and opportunities that we think are crucial for the area of pensions in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at how retirement timing is changing in Italy. A first aim is descriptive and it is to identify recent trends in retirement age, following the pension reform. Then the focus is on factors which may favour or hinder the extension of the working career of older workers. They are studied by looking at the reasons for retirement, introducing the distinction between voluntary and involuntary retirement, and some predictors of retirement. Some of them relate to the work history of individuals, in particular the stability/instability of careers due to episodes of unemployment. The level of education and gender, two variables that may affect the employability of older workers, have also been considered. The study is based on a longitudinal analysis (Kaplan–Meier survival estimates of transition to retirement and binomial logit discrete-time model for the analysis of retirement predictors) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) Job Episodes Panel data. They refer to a sample of 1,999 individuals born between 1911 and 1959. Although the various pension reforms initiated in Italy in the 1990s have not yet been fully implemented, retirement age is rising, even in the case of involuntary retirement. Regarding work history, the advantages of a working career with a small number of unemployment episodes emerge from the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public pensions can be poorly funded, and Kentucky's are among the worst funded in the nation. There are many reasons for this, but the overriding cause is the lack of funding discipline. Pension benefits are legally protected and highly valued, while pension funding is subject to competing social and budgetary goals and constraints. Kentucky has taken steps to shore up its pensions, including reforms of benefits and funding. But pension reform is intensely political, the job is not done, and it remains to be seen whether Kentucky pensions can withstand a prolonged recession. Reformers would therefore be well advised to follow developments in Kentucky. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a large body of evidence showing that for many countries the structure of wages and pensions and the labor law legislation are different for public and private employees. Such differences affect the occupational choice of agents and might generate some type of misallocation. We develop a life-cycle model with endogenous occupational choice and heterogeneous agents to study the implications of an overpaid public sector. The model is estimated to be consistent with micro and macro evidence for Brazil, a country with a high public sector earnings premium. Our counterfactual exercises demonstrate that public–private earnings premium can generate important allocation effects and sizeable productivity losses. For instance, a reform that would decrease the public–private wage premium from its benchmark value of |$19\%$| to |$15\%$| and would align the pension of public sector workers with the one in place for private sector workers could increase aggregate output by nearly |$11.2\%$| in the long run without any decrease in the supply of public infrastructure. We provide a decomposition of the aggregate effect into changes in factors accumulation and changes in TFP and implement a welfare distributive analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers the process of forming conceptual foundations of pension legislation in Russia, France, and Great Britain. The scientists of 17-18th centuries substantiated the right to life and human dignity as the most important human rights. Later, in 19-20th centuries, the right to a dignified existence, the right to assistance from the state in case of disability were formulated. The need for the livelihood of the elderly was recognized by most authors, however, there were serious discrepancies regarding the methods for provision and sources of financing payments. The article considers the pension laws adopted in Great Britain, France, and Russia in the first half of the 20th century that reflected the above concepts anyway. The French pension legislation has embodied the insurance model of pension security and was strongly influenced by Bismarck legislation, while the British one reflected the legislator’s desire to abandon the extremes of the ideology of individualism and ‘selfhelp’ through the introduction of state budget pensions. In Russia, the origin of compulsory social insurance took place almost simultaneously with Western European countries; however, this process was broken by the revolutionary events of 1917. As a result, a state budgetary pension system was created in Soviet Russia. The author comes to the conclusion about the mutual influence of various models of pension protection, legalized in the first half of the 20th century in the countries under consideration, as well as the special role of social solidarity concepts and the generational contract for the formation of these models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the micro and macroeconomic effects of pension reform by a consumption tax hike by using an overlapping-generations model that is primarily based on Groezen, Leers and Mejidam (2003). Although Groezen, Leers and Mejidam (2003) consider pay-as-you-go pension in a model of a small open economy, they do not analyze physical capital accumulation, assume that public pension is financed only by the intergenerational transfer of national pension premiums, and ignore consumption tax as a public pension resource. This study considers pay-as-you-go pension in a closed economy model and assumes that public pensions are financed by both consumption taxes and national pension premiums. In addition, although Groezen, Leers and Mejidam (2003) consider a model with endogenous fertility, this analysis uses a model with exogenous fertility based on Verbon (1988) and Breyer (1989). Subsequently, we consider the micro and macroeconomic effects of the policy that increases the consumption tax rate compared to the effects of increases under a national pension system. We find that even if the population growth rate is negative, both a consumption tax hike and increases in people's national pension premiums surprisingly promote physical capital accumulation, and if promoting physical capital is enough, such policies enhance economic growth remarkably. Furthermore, we show that a consumption tax hike may promote physical capital accumulation compared to an increase in national pension premiums if the consumption tax rate is not too high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background In 2013, Denmark implemented a reform that tightened the criteria for disability pension, expanded a subsidized job scheme ('flexi-job') and introduced a new vocational rehabilitation scheme. The overall aim of the reform was to keep more persons attached to the labour market. This study investigates the impact of the reform among persons with chronic disease and whether this impact differed across groups defined by labour market affiliation and chronic disease type. Methods The study was conducted as a register-based, nationwide cohort study. The study population included 480 809 persons between 40 and 64 years of age, who suffered from at least one of six chronic diseases. Hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of being awarded disability pension or flexi-job in the 5 years after vs. the 5 years prior to the reform were estimated. Results Overall, the probability of being awarded disability pension was halved after the reform (HR = 0.49, CI: 0.47–0.50). The impact was largest for persons receiving sickness absence benefits (HR = 0.31, CI: 0.24–0.39) and for persons with functional disorders (HR = 0.38, CI: 0.32–0.44). Also, the impact was larger for persons working in manual jobs than for persons working in non-manual jobs. The probability of being awarded a flexi-job was decreased by one-fourth (HR = 0.76, CI: 0.74–0.79) with the largest impact for high-skilled persons working in non-manual jobs. Conclusion Access to disability pension and flexi-job decreased after the reform. This impact varied according to labour market affiliation and chronic disease type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although regional policy experimentation has become a global trend, the distinct features of experimentalist governance in a given country, such as China, remains to be investigated. This article extends policy process theory by proposing the framework of experimentalist governance with interactive central–local relations or Chinese‐style experimentalist governance, which combines three features. First, policy goals and instruments are formed separately and interactively by the central and local governments. Second, the central government is burdened with its own concerns about policy performance for maintaining authority and legitimacy. Third, the evaluation of policy pilots relies primarily on the responses of local governments. We further conceptualize three new patterns of experimentalist governance in China, namely, "comparative trial," "selective recognition," and "adaptive reconciliation," in addition to "hierarchical experimentation." These patterns are illustrated with case studies on four pension policies in China, which are for public sector employees, urban employees, rural residents, and migrant workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]