ABSTRACT
Pension reform is always the most challenging type of government reform. In this chapter, the authors analyse Taiwan's pension reform in four sections. Firstly, we provide a four-stage overview of civil service pension reform in Taiwan. Secondly, we utilise Peter Hall's ‘3-i’ interpretive framework in discussing the fourth stage of reform. Thirdly, we present the results of two surveys of sampled civil servants to demonstrate the reform's impact on the civil service system. Lastly, we want to make three critical comments on Taiwan's civil service pension system's future. (1) Tsai faces an approaching labour insurance pension bankruptcy, the low payment rate of the national pension system, and the missing financial sources for the newly established farmers’ pension system caused by the low birth rate in the past twenty-plus years. (2) Because the pension reform took away the generous pension in civil service, civil service jobs will be less attractive to younger people. (3) The pension reform deepened the social cleavage between retired KMT civil servants and the ruling DPP party, both in the sense of divided national identity and class conflict within Taiwan.
