Private pension system and its application in Turkey

Social security policies and schemes mean any kind of collective measures or activities designed to ensure that members of society meet their basic needs and are protected from the risks and contingencies to enable them maintain a standard of living consistent with social norms and congruous to human dignity. However, social security policies and schemes faced some problems in the last quarter of the 20th century. It has become quite difficult to achieve the initial goals due to bottlenecks in financing, problems in the organization and administration of social security institutions and political and bureaucratic barriers. In this context, new openings have been created and become available in order to achieve the goals and objectives of social security policies and to solve the problems faced by the social security system. One of these new openings is the private pension system which constitutes the subject matter of our study.Private pension law was adopted and came into force in April, 2001 and accordingly the legal and institutional framework of the Turkish Private Pension System was completed and the system began to accept subscribers in October 2003. According to the most recent data available in the sector the number of the participants reached 1.664.170 and the size of the private pension funds amounted to 5.688.378.104 NTL. Although the private pension system is an integral part of social security reform, the system does not only serve to allow social security system to fulfill and achieve its assigned purpose but also plays an important role in further development of the financial system. In the study there is an application related to the private pension system being preferred or unpreferred by individuals. Data gathered through survey study were analyzed by using SPSS package program and were assessed according to the analysis results of the two different groups which are included and not included in the system.It has seen a correlation between the ages of group members who included in the private system, their marital statuses, occupations, social security foundations and their confidence on the system. Nonetheless it has comfirmed a relation between income level and nonattandance to the private system.