The outlook on elderly poverty in Türkiye and the role of old-age pensions in elderly poverty prevention

Old-age pensions are one of the most important tools for combating elderly poverty. In Türkiye, old-age pensions are provided through contributory and non-contributory mechanisms for the income security of the elderly. On the other hand, the neoliberal transformation since the 1980s has also affected the welfare state's social protection mechanisms for the elderly in Türkiye. With the reforms, policies were pursued to provide lower old-age pensions at later ages in the contributory regime. In the non-contributory regime, low level income protection is provided to the needy elderly aged 65 and over who cannot benefit from the contributory regime. Using a quantitative design, this study aims to determine the income poverty levels and poverty outlook of the elderly in Türkiye between 2005 and 2022 and the poverty alleviating role of old-age pensions on the elderly with the Income and Living Conditions micro datasets obtained from TurkStat. The study revealed that elderly poverty rates were lower than the overall poverty rates in all years. However, elderly poverty has increased from 11.4% to 17.6% in the last 3 years, approaching the overall poverty rate (21.3%). In general, poverty rates are higher for older people than younger people, for women than men, for those living in rural areas than in urban areas, for those with higher levels of education than those with lower levels of education, and for unregistered workers than registered workers. On the other hand, the share of old-age pensions in the income of households with elderly people is increasing every year. Significant differences (13.2%-35% decrease with transfers) were found between poverty rates before and after transfers of old-age pensions from the contributory and non-contributory systems. Although old-age pensions are highly effective in reducing elderly poverty, significant increases in elderly poverty and significant decreases in pensions relative to other economic indicators were found in 2021-2022 For reasons stemming from Türkiye's welfare regime and gender roles, old-age pensions play a poverty-reducing role, especially for men. On the other hand, pensions are decreasing for younger cohorts due to the reforms. In Türkiye, which is rapidly aging, there is a need to revise social security policies with modern models and to produce preventive rather than compensatory policies.