Measuring Sufficiency of Social Insurance in Maintaining Quality of Life of Civil Pensioners in Pakistan

Abstract

The global economic crisis in 2007 has given new impetus to the debate on social protection as an instrument for addressing worldwide poverty and vulnerability. Pakistan has several social protection programmes in place, but they are primarily skewed towards formal sector economy. Social protection can be contributory (social insurance) or non-contributory (social assistance). This paper attempts to measure sufficiency of social insurance benefits for civil pensioners in maintaining quality of life (QOL) in term of food, health and housing. Adopting quantitative approach, data were collected from 358 respondents from province of Punjab through structured questionnaire. The data were analysed using SPSS whereas descriptive statistics and Pearson Corelation analysis were performed. The results show that social insurance benefits (monthly pension and gratuity) were playing critical role in maintaining QOL of civil pensioners. Furthermore, results of correlation analysis revealed that all three domains of QOL were significantly correlated with social insurance benefits. The study concludes that overall QOL of the civil pensioners was better than pensioners of private sector or elderly citizens (non-pensioners) from economically poor background. The study provides an insight for social workers, policy makers and stakeholders for influencing policy making and social planning for redesigning and revising social insurance programmes in Pakistan