May 2025
23May

Reforming pensions in Africa: Addressing coverage, payoutdisparities, and dementia outcomes for sustainable aging

By yprian M. Mostert, Catherine Ajalo & David Andai We appreciate the thoughtful feedback from scholars who suggest thatwe should have used life expectancy at age 45 or 25 to support ourargument for pension reforms in Africa. While life expectancy at thesespecific ages provides an average estimate of the remaining lifespan, itdoes not capture the nuances of individual survival probabilities, mak-ing it less reliable for certain analyses. This remains a debated topic inthe literature.1,2 Life expectancy at birth, on the...

May 23, 2025
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16May

Till Death Us do Part: Liquidity and the Annuity Puzzle

By Barbara Summers & Robert Hudson The annuity puzzle refers to the phenomenon that voluntary annuity take-up is typically much lower than predicted by mainstream economic models. Such models typically make strong assumptions regarding the risk and uncertainty facing individuals and neglect the role of liquidity. Often individuals are assumed to face only longevity risk or to have hedged all other risks in complete markets. In practice individuals need an element of liquidity in their portfolios to control the risks...

May 16, 2025
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09May

Participation in Pension Programs in Low and Middle Income Countries

By John Giles, Clement Joubert & Tomoaki Tanaka Low- and middle-income countries are aging rapidly but stagnation of growth in participation in pension programs, due to widespread informal employment, presents a major fiscal challenge. Some claim that improving the design of pension program rules can encourage more pension contributions, while others push for universal non-contributory pensions. This paper reviews the recent academic literature on the determinants of active participation in pension systems in high-informality settings. An emerging body of evidence...

May 9, 2025
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April 2025
25Apr

Adequacy of future retirement incomes: new evidence for private sector employees

By Jonathan Cribb, Laurence O'Brien & David Sturrock In this report and the accompanying report on policy recommendations (Cribb et al., 2024a), we focus on the outlook for the adequacy of employees’ retirement incomes and changes to automatic enrolment. We do not here consider reforms that we broadly define as aimed at changing investments, costs and returns (including ‘pot for life’ and collective defined contribution pensions) but will return to consider these later in the Pensions Review. A separate report...

April 25, 2025
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25Apr

Digital Transformation of Public Pensions a Case Study of Four European Countries

By Alina Mihaela This paper delves into the pension systems of four European nations – Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Romania – offering a comprehensive analysis of their respective structures, digitalization efforts and potential for harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) for public benefit. It paints a vivid portrait of the various approaches to pension systems and digitalization strategies in these four European countries. It illuminates the potential of AI and technology to drive progress in the public sector, ultimately improving citizen well-being...

April 25, 2025
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16Apr

Awareness of the Government-Introduced Universal Pension Scheme Among the Adult Population in Bangladesh: A Nationwide Cross-Sectional Survey

By Sharmin Rima, Md. Mahir Faysal, Abdullah Al Mamun, Khadija Akter Sonia, Hossna Tasmia Monia, Anika Tahseen Nuva, Ahbab Mohammad Fazle Rabbi, Abdullah-Al-Mamun & Mohammad Hossain The Universal Pension Scheme (UPS) was introduced in Bangladesh in August 2023 to address economic security concerns for its growing older adults. Despite the government's numerous promotional efforts, the response rate to UPS remains modest. This study aimed to investigate awareness of the UPS among the Bangladeshi population. The study's sample size was 1624,...

April 16, 2025
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March 2025
05Mar

The 2023 Latin America report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: the imperative for health-centred climate-resilient development

By Stella M. Hartinger, Yasna K. Palmeiro-Silva, Camila Llerena-Cayo, Luciana Blanco-Villafuerte, Luis E. Escobar, Avriel Diaz, Juliana Helo Sarmiento, Andrés G. Lescano, Oscar Melo, David Rojas-Rueda, Bruno Takahashi, Max Callaghan, Francisco Chesini, Shouro Dasgupta, Carolina Gil Posse, Nelson Gouveia, Aline Martins de Carvalho, Zaray Miranda-Chacón, Nahid Mohajeri, Chrissie Pantoja, Elizabeth J. Z. Robinson, Maria Fernanda Salas, Raquel Santiago, Enzo Sauma, Mauricio Santos-Vega, Daniel Scamman, Milena Sergeeva, Tatiana Souza de Camargo, Cecilia Sorensen, Juan D. Umaña, Marisol Yglesias-González, Maria Walawender,...

March 5, 2025
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February 2025
14Feb

Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: The Effects of Reforms on Retirement Behavior

By Axel Börsch-Supan & Courtney Coile Employment among older men and women has increased dramatically in recent years, reversing a downward trend in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World examines how changing retirement incentives have reshaped labor force participation trends among older workers. The chapters feature country-specific analyses for Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They find that while there is significant heterogeneity...

February 14, 2025
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January 2025
17Jan

Pensionomics 2025: Measuring the Economic Impact of Defined Benefit Pension Expenditures

By Dan Doonan & Iliana Boivie Pensionomics 2025: Measuring the Economic Impact of Defined Benefit Pension Expenditures finds pension spending powered by U.S. private and public sector defined benefit pensions contributed significantly to the economy. In 2022, retiree spending of public and private sector pension benefits generated $1.5 trillion in total economic output, supporting 7.1 million jobs across the nation. In addition to its impact on employment and economic activity, pension spending bolstered public finances in 2022, adding $224.3 billion in...

January 17, 2025
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17Jan

Retirement Consumption and Pension Design

By Jonas Kolsrud, Camille Landais, Daniel Reck & Johannes Spinnewijn This paper analyzes consumption to evaluate the distributional effects of pension reforms. Using Swedish administrative data, we show that on average workers who retire earlier consume less while retired and experience larger drops in consumption around retirement. Interpreted via a theoretical model, these findings imply that reforms incentivizing later retirement incur a substantial consumption-smoothing cost. Turning to other features of pension policy, we find that reforms that redistribute based on...

January 17, 2025
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