A national or social pension in Croatia is needed for persons who do not fulfil the criteria for regular old-age pension from work and live alone or in households where no one is receiving a pension. The task included a preparation of the analysis on the advantages and disadvantages of the social pension system. The advantages are related to the possibility to reduce poverty in the elderly population, to enable administrative simplicity, to alleviate the stigma of poverty and to broaden the coverage of social assistance beneficiaries. Among the disadvantages are the possibility of the rate of active workers in the official economy becoming lower and potentially distorting the equity of the pension system. Determining a fairly high amount of such a pension will most likely adversely affect the relationship with other pensions. This undermines the fairness of the pension system because similar pensions are provided to insured persons who worked for a number of years and/or had regular income and paid contributions and to those who did not. The analysis ended with an estimate of the potential number of users and the necessary financial resources. In defining social pensions, we should bear in mind its positive features, but also possible negative impacts on stronger motivation to work in the unofficial economy and the danger of distorting the equity of the pension system. In the possible adoption of the social pension, clear criteria need to be set, which primarily means to determine the estimated age of potential beneficiaries, to define the income census and the method for mean-testing the income and/or property.