On the other hand, Sweden has a regressive mandatory pension scheme, due to the U-shaped profile of the replacement rate.9 Some of the southern and eastern European countries, as well as Finland and the Netherlands, also show little progressivity. Among these countries, Italy and Poland now have defined-contribution second-tier pensions, which have been specifically designed to forge a strong link between contributions and benefits - i.e. redistribution over the life-cycle instead of across individuals. Low-income earners tend to die at a younger age than high-income earners {e.g. Waldrom, 2007, Christia, 2007, Marmot and Shipley, 1996). Pension income is in general taxed at lower rates than work-related income because: i) the personal income tax is progressive and gross replacement rates are generally below 100%, ii) pensioners are often exempted from certain types of social security contributions or pay them at a reduced rate. The effect of taxes on pension progressivity can be gauged by comparing the gap between gross (before taxes) and net (after taxes) replacement rates for low and high-income earners.11 Figure 6 shows that taxes and social security contributions slightly reduce the progressivity of retirement-income schemes on average across the OECD.