September 2026

Chile envejece: ¿estamos preparados?

La caída de la fecundidad, el aumento de la longevidad y los desafíos en pensiones y cuidados han llevado los cambios sociodemográficos al centro de la discusión. Hasta hace poco, el envejecimiento se abordaba como un problema de las personas mayores. Hoy compromete a toda la sociedad. Pero reconocer esta transformación no significa estar preparados. La Octava Encuesta Nacional sobre Inclusión y Exclusión Social de las Personas Mayores en Chile 2025 es reveladora: un 84% respondió que el país estaba...

México tiene el segundo impuesto más bajo de formalidad: Banco Mundial

El  impuesto implícito sobre la formalidad en México es el segundo más bajo en comparación con Brasil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia y Perú, revela el Banco Mundial (BM). En el documento Racionalizar la informalidad se destaca que el 55 por ciento de los trabajadores en América Latina en el sector informal, cifra que se ha mantenido alta en las últimas 2 décadas. Se especifica que la informalidad laboral no es un bloque homogéneo de personas porque los trabajadores toman decisiones en...

South Korea. Prepare for era of extreme aging

Korea is on course to have the world’s oldest population by 2060, overtaking Japan. The projection is more than a demographic curiosity. It is a warning that one of the world’s most advanced economies is approaching an unprecedented test of its pension, health care, labor and fiscal systems. According to a 2025 report from the U.S. Census Bureau, the share of Korea’s population aged 65 and over is projected to rise from 20.3 percent last year to 41 percent in...

Bumper growth for world’s largest pension funds as UK market contracts

The UK was one of only two major pension markets to record a decline in assets over the past five years, according to new research. This retrenchment comes as the world’s largest 300 pension funds saw their assets jump 13.4 per cent during 2025, to a record $27.7 trillion (£20.7 trillion). This is the fastest annual growth for the world’s largest schemes since 2017. The figures also show that the world largest pension fund, Norway’s Government Pension Fund, became the first...

Top 300 pension funds’ AuM reaches record high

The world’s top 300 pension funds experienced the fastest growth in assets since 2017, according to the latest report from the Thinking Ahead Institute. The report found that assets under management grew by 13.4% in 2025, reaching a record-high of $27.7 trillion. The growth was most pronounced among the largest of these 300 pension funds, supporting the notion that the largest funds are getting larger. For example, the Government Pension Fund of Norway surpassed $2 trillion in AuM for the first time,...

Global pension asset allocations and debt markets

By Ding Ding, Xiang Fang, Bryan Hardy & Karen K. Lewis The pension sector is an important investor group in global financial markets and a key holder of government and corporate debt. This article examines the evolution of pension fund asset allocations around the globe and documents two important structural changes. First, pension investors have shifted portfolio share allocations away from fixed income securities. This trend is robust across Defined Contribution (DC) and Defined Benefit (DB) programs as well as...

Subjective Financial Literacy and Retirement Planning

By Weiqiang Tan & Jingbo Wu This research uses data from the National Financial Capability Study to investigate how subjective financial literacy (FL) influences retirement planning behaviors. Through a probit model, we establish that subjective FL have significant positive effects on three common retirement planning behaviors. When analyzing how subjective FL affects retirement planning, we find that retirement savings estimation partially mediates the relationship between subjective FL and the opening of retirement accounts. In addition, we find that the effect...

Redistribution through Taxes or Pensions? Optimal Income Tax and Pension Progressivity

By Burkhard Heer & Mark M. Trede We develop a medium-scale overlapping-generations model with endogenous labor supply and skill premium to study optimal income redistribution using progressive labor income taxes and pensions. The model is calibrated to the four countries USA, Great Britain, Italy and Germany which differ substantially in their tax and pension systems, demographics, and skill shares among workers. Optimal pension benefits are proportional to lifetime contributions in all four countries, while the optimal degree of income tax...

Pensions from Capital: How Pension Funds in the United States, Japan and Europe Invest -and What Private Investors Can Learn from Them

By Roland Rupprechter This paper examines the pension funds of the large industrial countries — with more than USD 68 trillion between them, the heaviest group of investors in the world. It compares how funded retirement provision is organised in the United States, in Japan and in Europe: how state, occupational and private provision differ, who grants which tax advantages to whom and at what level, and why equity quotas diverge so widely across regions — from 25 per cent...

Pensions 2050: Evidence and future priorities

By Jack Jones The second Pension Commission’s interim report provides a clear and urgent call to action. It describes a system in which, although participation rates in workplace pensions have doubled due to auto-enrolment, up to 19 million working age people are not on track to meet the retirement income targets set by the first Pension Commission. The triple locked flat-rate State Pension provides a firm foundation on which retirement incomes are built, and auto-enrolment has more than doubled the numbers...