ACCESSING THE IMPLICATIONS OF PENSION REFORMS ON THE WELFARE OF RETIREES IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Pension reforms have been a critical aspect of economic policy. Many countries have “increased work incentives by reducing pension levels and/or by increasing the actuarial fairness of pensions. While many reforms have been implemented in Nigeria, many retirees have expressed serious concern about the inability of the reforms to address the problems of standard of living of the retirees. Therefore, the study examines the effect of pension reform on the welfare of retirees in Nigeria. The study aims to analyze the impact of increase in the minimum pension contribution into the scheme, evaluate the effect of reduction in the waiting period for accessing benefit (IPMC), investigate the influence of extension of mandatory retirement age (RWPB)), examine how upward review of penalties/sanctions of pension defaulters (URPP) impact retire welfare in Nigeria, and assess the effect of temporary retirement savings account (TRSA) on retiree welfare. Different stakeholders who benefit from government actions in Nigeria make up the population of the study while purposive sampling was used to choose 150 respondents and for analysis, the study employed ordinal logistic regression. The findings demonstrated a positive association between good governance and independent variables (IMPC, RWPB, EMRA, and TRSA), with marginal impact coefficients of 0.606, .059, 1.048, 0.30 and 0.053, and p-values of 0.000, 0.045, 0.021, and 0.033 respectively. It is concluded that the more generous the pension benefits, the higher the income in the older population may have a redistributive income impact amongst the elderly. The study recommends that government should endeavor to address all the problems hampering the successful performance of all the pension schemes in Nigeria by ensuring that the different agencies put in place to manage them ensure prompt payment of the gratuity or pension to retirees.