Robert L. Brown. Economic Security in an Aging Population. Butterworths Perspectives on Individual and Population Aging series. Toronto and Vancouver: Butterworths, 1991, pp. 137.

Abstract

Robert Brown's work constitutes an excellent synthesis of the foreseeable evolution of income-security plans, as regards seniors and the problems relative to these plans in an aging-of-the-population context. However, it contains nothing new on the measures that the State should institute to diminish the effects of an aging population. Brown believes that retirement plans implemented by employers as well as personal retirement-savings plans should be the preferred forms of retirement savings encouraged by the government. Within this framework, the fiscal reform of 1990, which significantly increases the allowable deductions for a registered-retirement savings plan, comprises a step in the right direction. Unlike the author, I believe that public retirement plans like the Quebec Pension Plan (Q.P.P.) and the Canada Pension Plan (C.P.P.) should constitute the cornerstone of any policy on income security upon retirement. Consequently, in a an-aging-of-the-population context, it seems important to rapidly increase the level of contribution to these plans, in order to better capitalize them and to stabilize the long-term level of contribution. We should also study the possibility of integrating the old age income-security pension into these plans, so that the level of compensation for revenue from work guaranteed by the public plan is stabilized at a rate of 70 per cent for low-income earners and 40 per cent for middle-income earners, as is the case in the American social security plan.