Designing Solutions for the Retirement System – In Search of Balance between Economy and Health

Social security system currently faces a number of difficulties arising of changes in the demographic structure of societies, like the decrease in fertility, lengthening of life expectancy, and unfavorable change in the proportion of the population receiving retirement benefits to the population in working age. In result, social security systems are being subjected to transition aimed at securing their financial stability, part of which is a tendency to rise the retirement age and eliminate all the incentives to prematurely exit the labor market. On the other hand, this process of transition, as observed in Poland, is being driven mainly by political processes and due to economic reasons, while lacking public health evidence. This raises a danger that in final result the financial savings will be illusory only and that the final configuration of the system will be inconsistent with the actual social needs of the population and will not efficiently protect against the social risks. In this article, we present arguments for using the Healthy Life Years indicator in analyses relating to the performance of social security systems. The indicator may help to reflect differences in health status of different professional groups and adjust system’s solutions to conditions characterizing these groups, in terms of both risk protection and prevention.