Determinants of social security pensions expenditure in Portugal

In most European countries Social Security (SS) systems are characterized as Pay-asyou- go systems. Their sustainability is being challenged with demographic changes, namely population ageing. Portugal’s population is ageing rapidly being one of the countries where this problem is more critical. With the growing debate on this topic several public choice models have been developed so as to explain SS size. In this work project there is an attempt to understand whether these models contribute to better explain Social security expenditure with pensions (SSEP) and to establish the need of finding ways to reduce present commitment with pension expenditure in Portugal.