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«The first thing to be said about pensioners in Greece is that, amazingly, we don’t know exactly how many there are, only the number of pensions paid out, even though this is an administrative process that is electronically documented,» said Ilias Kikilias, an economist and researcher at the National Social Research Center’s Social Policy Institute. «The main reason is that although individual pension funds know how many pensions they pay out, many people are receiving pensions from two or more funds. So far no system has been set up to give us this information,» he explained. One of the most serious effects of this is that all surveys are based either on the number of pensions or on statistical approximations of the number of pensioners. «Another equally serious consequence is that when a survey is made, for example regarding the Social Security Foundation pensions, a number of pensioners could be classified in the lowest pay scales, but in fact could actually be collecting quite a high total as a result of payments from other funds,» he explained.
