In recent years, Portugal has implemented numerous (temporary and permanent) parametric
pension reforms aimed at reducing public pension expenditures, with little margin for addressing
income adequacy concerns in an already highly aged society. The main policy initiatives were
driven by the short-term need for scal consolidation rather than by a long-term prospect for the
design of pension systems.
We porpose to evaluate the recent reforms and show how the dramatic change in demnographics in Portugal will lead to several challenges in the sustainability and management of the pension system.