Research
Pension systems worldwide face a genuine and structural funding crisis — aging demographics, falling worker-to-retiree ratios, and trillions in unfunded liabilities are not contested — but the most consequential disputes are political, not actuarial: which discount rate counts liabilities as real, whether DB-to-DC shifts improve or worsen retirement security for workers (especially women and minorities), and whether shortfalls reflect demographic inevitability or decades of deliberate underfunding enabled by tax cuts and financial extraction. The briefing's most important tension is that both the fiscal-restraint camp (Cato, AEI, Rauh) and the structural-justice camp (EPI, NIRS, labor economists) cite real data while weighting adequacy against sustainability differently, meaning the "right" reform depends almost entirely on which risks — market volatility borne by individuals, or fiscal burden borne by future taxpayers — a society considers more tolerable. A busy reader should note that several load-bearing perspectives remain underrepresented in the sourcing, that the mental-health and physical-labor costs of raising retirement ages are largely absent from policy models, and that the Global South's 93%-informal-sector workforce is nearly invisible in mainstream sustainability debates despite representing the majority of the world's future retirees.
In 2025, The national shortfall in assets for state and local pension plans shrank from $1.54 trillion in 2024 to an estimated $1.27 trillion shortfall in 2025.
These reforms include lower multipliers, increases to the period used to calculate an employee's final average salary, and an increase to the required age and/ ...
Individuals and politicians in high income countries are finally waking up to the challenge of population aging. While the message of increased life expectancy, ...
The normal retirement age will increase in the average OECD country from 64.7 and 63.9 years for men and women retiring in 2024 to 66.4 and 65.9 ...
Contributors explore the pros and cons of pension ESG investments and discuss case studies from the US and around the world.
In addition to a move from DB to DC products, pension funds can also be mandated or instructed by regulatory bodies to increase their premia/contributions, ...
The 2025 edition of Pensions at a Glance highlights the pension reforms undertaken by OECD countries over the last two years.
Population aging is putting pressure on the fiscal sustainability of pension systems. Timely reforms—such as raising retirement ages and ...
And that possibility raises a question of intergenerational equity: Is it equitable that a future generation should pay for the current generation's pension ...
Myth No. 1: The process takes a long time (18–24 months). · Myth No. 2: The process requires a lot of time from their HR or finance staff. · Myth ...
After a century of decline, work activity among older men stabilized in the 1980s and began to rise in the early 1990s.
This paper analyzes various reform options for Japan's public pension in light of large fiscal consolidation needs of the country.
The note compares funded and pay-as-you-go finance of retirement incomes, highlighting the transition double burden.
The 2025 edition of Pensions at a Glance highlights the pension reforms undertaken by OECD countries over the last two years.
Effective from 1 January 2026, insured employees entitled to an oldage pension may now, with employer consent, receive a partial pension while ...
In 2024, on average in OECD countries, women aged 65 could expect to live until age 86.6 and men until 83.5 (Figure 6.2). The highest levels are ...
In the new NDC system, workers could choose to retire between 57 and 65 years of age, provided the pension benefit amounted at least to 1.5 times the 'social ...
This study aims to explain factors determines the participations in the pension fund program in Indonesia. The data used is financial literacy and financial ...
The Conservatives have accepted some regulation to prevent abuses of the new system but their priority now is to promote active decision making ...
More than three-fourths of Americans have a favorable view of pensions, while 77 percent agree that the disappearance of pensions makes it ...
What does a 'suspension' of France's pension reform actually mean? ... Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has proposed a temporary halt to a contested 2023 pension ...
The reforms include raising the contribution rate, increasing the old-age pension replacement rate, and expanding credits for childbirth and military service.
Workers ages 55 or older have been the fastest-growing age group in the labor force for more than two decades and made up 24% of the U.S. ...
The net pension replacement rate is defined as the individual net pension entitlement divided by net pre-retirement earnings, taking into account personal ...
China's pension system has come a long way. But lingering structural problems remain, above all, inequalities, sustainability and reach.
Increase the normal retirement age (NRA) 3 months per year for those age 62 starting in 2026 and ending in 2033 (NRA reaches 69 for those age 62 in 2033).
A sovereign wealth fund is owned by the general government, which includes both central government and sub-national governments. Includes investments in foreign ...
“To reach an aspirational goal of 75% funding ratio, a pay down of $17.3 billion is required (pension experts would argue that a higher goal of 80% would be.
The legal protections for pension benefits of public sector employees and private sector employees have one common denominator: complexity. The source and the ...
In this paper we examine the distributional consequences of three alternative approaches to pension reform within a model that takes account of the dynamic ...
People worldwide risk outliving their retirement savings within 8 to 20 years, with women affected more severely.
In logistic modeling, older immigrants from Asia and Latin America were less likely to receive retirement income from abroad than those from Europe (Odds ratio ...
Despite a converging trend over the last 30 years, women can still retire without penalty at lower age than men in nine OECD countries. Based on ...
The new retirement option, known as “composite plans,” would provide retirees an annuitized benefit much like defined benefit pension plans.
Universal Basic Income (UBI) could be designed to reduce poverty, improve income security and boost well-being, but could be expensive and challenging to ...
Some pension funds are already moving on climate change risks despite ESG pushback, but more action is needed say campaigners.
We provide concrete recommendations to improve the UK pension system to secure better standards of living for future pensioners.
The effects of the recent steep declines in housing prices on retirement decisions are unknown, but are likely to serve as work incentives for older workers.
The report highlights the impact of population aging on pension systems, emphasizing the need for reforms to ensure fiscal sustainability and ...
The essential point is the claim that prefunding a second pension would not impose a double burden on this generation. The burden is illusory, and hence there ...
Critical and declining plans are still heading toward insolvency, with participating employers, plan participants, and the PBGC bearing the primary financial ...
We have proved the thesis that the replacement rate is not a sufficient measure of broadly understood pension adequacy in cross-country studies.
From 2019 to 2022, the average value of assets held by families in the group increased most for nonfinancial retirement assets and home equity.
In my work as a behavioral economist, I've thought a lot about how nudges can drive lasting behavior change. In the domain of retirement savings, ...
Pension reform can potentially increase saving and improve incentives for labor force participation later in life. We investigate whether these effects are ...
The economist Martin Feldstein, in a 1995 article in the Public Interest, argued that contributions must be mandatory for two reasons: “First, some ...
Not only are people living longer, but longevity risk – the risk of paying out on pensions and annuities for longer than anticipated – increasingly calls into ...
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