• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.113-126
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• 1990

With the introduction of the national pension, efficient integration of Korea's four public pension schemes has been discussed. The main point of such discussions is whether to have a progressive scheme or an income-proportional one. Under the assumption of a perfect labor market, it has been proved in the income tax literature that the regressive tax scheme with the 0 % tax rate to the most able person (person earning highest income) is pareto efficient, if there is an incentive problem in the labor supply. In this paper, a life-cycle model with a linear benefit schedule, when there is uncertainty about future earning ability, is studied. It is proved that the second best pension scheme is that having a progressive benefit schedule. This result implies that integration into a progressive pension scheme, like the current national pension, is required not only for efficiency but also for equity.