The aim of this article is twofold: to establish the connection between the ‘Contribution Asset’ (CA) and the ‘Hidden Asset’ (HA) and to determine whether using either of them to compile the Actuarial Balance (AB) sheet in the Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) pension system will provide a reliable solvency indicator. With these aims in mind, we develop a model based on those first put forward by Settergren and Mikula (2005) and Boado-Penas et al. (2008) to obtain the analytical properties of the CA and to confirm its soundness as a measure of the assets of a PAYG scheme. Our model also enables us to explore whether, and to what extent, the HA can be considered a second alternative measure of the assets for PAYG schemes. The main theoretical finding is that, despite their very different natures, the HA and the CA may nearly coincide at the limit when the interest rate of the financial market approaches the growth of the covered wage bill from above, but the HA supplies a solvency indicator which is not always consistent with the system's financial health.

This paper examines the possibility of embedding public long-term care (LTC) insurance within the retirement pension system, i.e. introducing life care annuities into a notional defined contribution framework. To do this, we develop a multistate overlapping generations model that includes the so-called survivor dividend and give special attention to the assumptions made about mortality rates for dependent persons and LTC incidence rates, which largely determine the contribution rate assigned to LTC. The proposed model could be of interest to policymakers because it could be implemented without too much difficulty, it would universalize LTC coverage with a “fixed” cost, and it would discourage politicians from making promises about future LTC benefits without the necessary funding support.