The distributional consequences of reducing public pension spending, for example, depend on whether these are implemented through adjusting pension eligibility age, or lowering replacement rates. In particular, raising the effective retirement age is ranked high among the consolidation instruments due to its potential positive equity and growth effects, though it would yield only gradual budgetary improvements. On the other hand, an across-the-board reduction in pension replacement rates, could hurt equity though it improves the budget balance, with ambiguous growth effects (OECD, 2013a, Rawdanowicz et al.,