Social insurance based on personal savings accounts

Many countries have, or are in the process of, reforming their pension system. The trend is to move from entitlement based systems. to systems in which contributions accumulate in some form of personal savings account. In recent years proposals have been made to apply a personal savings account also to other elements of social insurance, such as unemployment benefits, social assistance, health care costs and others. This paper describes the basic principles involved in constructing an extended social insurance based on personal savings accounts.