Measuring Sustainability of the "Pay as You Go" Public Pension System in the Republic of Macedonia

The analysis of the demographical data indicates that currently the main challenge for the sustainability of the pay-as-you-go public pension system in Macedonia is not the aging population. The revenues from contributions as a percentage of total pension system's revenues are decreasing due to low labour activity, low wages and slow job-creation. The larger deficits of the fund call for an analysis and possible reform action. The paper provides simulations under proposed assumptions until 2030. In our simulations, the pension fund starts to generate surpluses after 2025-26. They are higher or lower depending on the policy to be chosen. The sensitivity of the pension system is the highest to the GDP growth, which points to the need to find mechanisms to accelerate growth.