For more than 15 years, Spain, through different governments, has been looking for solutions to guarantee the sustainability of the pension system, which has more and more beneficiaries and pays higher amounts, which means that spending is increasing. Increase in retirement agenew tax on workers to pay current pensions (known as MEI) or a tightening of the pensions of those who decide to retire before their normal age are some of the measures, but for some experts they are still not enough. An economist’s report Daniel Lacalle, Through Atenea, he now maintains that the current Social Security model is not viable in the long term and that a deeper change is needed. Your proposal looks at Swedena country that combines public pension with individual savings and that, according to the document, has achieved a clearer system that is more resistant to the aging of the population.
In Spain, today’s pensions are paid with the contributions of today’s workers. That system works as long as there are enough employees and enough salaries to feed it. The problem comes when there are more and more retirees, fewer births and more pressure on public accounts. The report maintains that this mix is leading the system to increasingly depend on the State, debt and extra transfers to be able to balance numbers.
The document insists that the problem is, more than demographic, labor and economic. He explains that there are more and more pensions to pay, that expenses do not stop growing and that income from contributions alone is not enough to cover it. In other words, it means that Social Security needs constant help from outside to continue functioning as it has until now (remember that in June 2025 there was a hole of 126,000 million in pensions after three decades of non-payments).
He also defends that the system is not very transparent for the worker. Many people contribute for decades, but do not really know how much they have contributed, what pension they can expect or to what extent their retirement will depend on the evolution of the economy and the political decisions of each moment. That is where the report puts the focus on Sweden.
Why look at Sweden
The Swedish model, as described in the study, does not eliminate the public pension, but it does distribute the weight better, that is, not depending on a single leg but rather on several. On the one hand, it maintains a public part linked to contributions during working life. On the other hand, it reserves a small part for individual savings, which is invested and generates profitability over the years. In addition, there is a guaranteed minimum pension for those who do not reach a sufficient level.
In other words, the difference is here. Instead of trusting everything to the new generations paying the previous ones, the Swedish system tries to ensure that each worker has more of a relationship between what they contribute and what they will receive, and that a part of their future pension does not depend only on the common fund. The report believes that this distribution of risks makes the model more stable.
The “orange envelope” and knowing what awaits you
One of the examples that the study highlights the most is the so-called Swedish “orange envelope.” Each worker receives periodic information about the money accumulated, the estimated pension and how that figure would change depending on the age at which he or she decides to retire. It is a simple way to make visible something that many citizens in Spain feel distant or difficult to understand.
The report defends precisely that. Less opacity, more information and more room for each person to know what they really have when the time comes to retire.
The study considers that continuing to burden only contributions, taxes and debt will not solve the underlying problem. That is why it proposes a gradual transition towards a mixed model, with a minimum pension protected by the State, notional accounts linked to contributions and a portion of individual savings.