Benchmarking Outputs of Pension Provisions in China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan: A SMOP Approach

Abstract

This research intends to construct a pension policy index with the Surface Measure of Overall Performance (SMOP) approach to measure, compare and rank the performance of pension system outputs of urban and rural China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. It is found that the overall performance of these five Asian pensions was generally low. The urban and rural Chinese pension schemes were ranked as the best and worst systems respectively; while Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan’s performances were at similar levels. These five Asian schemes were with significant weaknesses in old-age poverty reduction, de-familisation and scale of resources emphasized on retirement income security.