Many countries have, or are in the process of, reforming their pension
system. The trend is to move from entitlement based systems. to syste
ms in which contributions accumulate in some form of personal savings
account. In recent years proposals have been made to apply a personal
savings account also to other elements of social insurance, such as un
employment benefits, social assistance, health care costs and others.
This paper describes the basic principles involved in constructing an
extended social insurance based on personal savings accounts.