국민연금 재정안정화 정책의 세대별 후생효과 (Fiscal Sustainability of National Pension and Generational Equity)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국금융학회
· 수록지 정보 : 금융연구 / 36권 / 4호 / 57 ~ 99페이지
· 저자명 : 전영준

초록

본 연구에서는 일반균형모형을 이용하여 국민연금재정안정화 방안의 세대별 후생효과를 추정하였다. 현행의 급여수준을 전제하고 국민연금재정 수입을 확충하는 방식의 국민연금 재정안정화 방안을 상정하였다. 현행의 저부담-고급여 체제하에서 재정안정화를 위해 미래세대의 조세부담의 대폭적인 증가가 불가피하며 이로 인해 높은 수준의 후생비용이 초래될 것으로 예상된다. 또한 증세를 하되 사회후생을 극대화하는 최적 조세구조에 근접하는 세제개편을 통해 미래세대의 후생비용을 줄일 수 있는 가능성도 확인하였다. 소비세 비중의 확대, 소득세 비중의 축소, 자녀 양육과 교육 보조 확대와 더불어 초기 연도에 국민연금 재정흑자를 확대하여 국민연금기금을 증식하며 후기 연도의 적자재정을 통해 미래세대의 부담을 줄임으로서 미래세대의 후생비용을 줄이고 사회후생을 증진할 수 있을 것으로 보인다.

영어초록

The issue of financial instability of National Pension (NPS) has been raised since 1990s. The level of promised NPS benefits is much higher than that of NPS contribution burden, this inevitably results in the financial instability, and the rapid population aging of Korea adds seriousness to the problem. The government has implemented a few policy revisions to resolve the problem: the NPS benefit replacement ratio on average was lowered from 70% to 60% in 1998, and from 60% to 40% in 2007. Despite the efforts, the fiscal unsustainability has not been fundamentally solved. The accumulation of pension debt will eventually increase the tax burden of the future generations. Various NPS revision plans have been suggested: from parametric reforms, which raise the contribution level or reduce benefits, to fundamental reforms, which replace the current system with a completely new contribution and benefit structure. Regardless of the revision method that the government may select, the policy revision will affect the net tax burden across generations, lead to change in the economic growth, and eventually alter their welfare level.
We attempt to address the welfare effects of the policy revisions for the fiscal sustainability improvement of the National Pension fund, using a general equilibrium model. We simulate the economy where the government implements the simplest form of the parametric reform for the long-term fiscal stability of National Pension budget: raising additional tax revenue of the present and the future to match the present value of the promised pension benefits with that of collectable pension fund revenue. This is because the fundamental reforms take various forms, therefore it will take time to reach a consensus on the policy and the action plan. Regarding the parametric reform, a higher priority is given to raising tax or contribution burden, because: the NPS benefit has been already lowered twice while the contribution rate has not been altered and is too low to service the promised benefit level. To accommodate the growth-reduction effects of tax increase in our simulation, we formulate the decision-making of individuals on the savings, the educational investment, and the fertility, which determines the wealth accumulation, the human capital buildup, and population increase. We also try to identify the optimal resource allocation, which is derived from the optimal tax structure and the optimal National Pension fund management scheme, to employ it as the benchmark for the welfare analysis.
The policy simulations with the model and the model calibration reflecting the Korean economy, the National Pension benefit and contribution structure, and the current tax structure reveals that: (1) the required increase in the tax revenues bring about large welfare cost of the future generations; (2) the welfare cost is primarily due to the reduction of economic growth resulting from the decrease in the human capital investment and the wealth accumulation; and (3) there is a large room for the welfare improvement by restructuring into the tax and the national pension fund management system close to the optimal taxation and the resulting optimal fund management scheme, by increasing proportion of consumption tax, reducing that of income tax, providing considerable subsidies to the childbirth, the childcare, and the educational investment, to improve the economic growth, and enforcing the national budget surplus in the beginning, turning into budget deficit in the later periods, maintaining a National Pension fund large enough to generating property income to make up the deficit, to reduce the tax burden of the future generations.
In this study, our main interest is the intergenerational equity related with the National Pension reform. The optimal tax structure derived from our analysis includes a considerable dependence of proportional consumption taxes, to finance the required net National Pension benefit payment, and reducing the progressive income taxes. Even though this tax structure has the advantage of improving growth and standard of living of the future generations, it undermines the intra-generational equity, which is the vertical equity of tax burden across income groups. The identification of optimal tax structure balancing the intergenerational equity and the intra-generational fairness should be next research agenda to overcome this dilemma.
In addition, our analysis focuses on the effects of the fiscal policies, related with the system stabilization of the National Pension. The analysis does not take explicit account of the distortion of financial markets due to the change in the National Pension fund magnitude. Excessive accumulation of national pension may cause the exorbitant market power of the fund on the financial markets, and the unconscionable interference in the management of private businesses. The future research will have to include this aspect of policy effects for the analysis.

참고자료

· 없음