Reassessing South-European Pensions after the Crisis: Evidence from two Decades of Reforms

The article studies pension reforms in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain between 1990 and 2013, focusing on three change dimensions: multi-pillarisation, institutional harmonisation, and spending trends (cost-containment/expansion). Their pension evolution is reassessed throughout crisis and austerity. All countries encouraged the spread of private pensions and harmonised their fragmented public schemes. Cost containment was massive, putting future adequacy at risk. While international actors, especially the EU, acquired a stronger role, that of organised labour declined. Spiralling between crisis and austerity, these systems changed and adapted, but still face old and new problems: inequality, risk individualisation, and increasing vulnerability to external shocks.