May 2026
15May

A PRISMA-Based Systematic Review of Gender Inequality in Uruguay’s Pension System

By Emre Kurt This paper examines the gendered effects of pension and retirement systems in Uruguay through a systematic literature review, motivated by persistent inequalities arising from contributory social protection models that reflect labor-market disparities and unequal caregiving responsibilities. Using the PRISMA 2020 framework, the study identifies and evaluates 21 relevant studies selected from an initial pool of 205 records, applying a gender-audit approach to distinguish between research with central and partial gender analysis. The findings reveal a methodologically diverse...

May 15, 2026
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08May

ISSA Annual review 2025: Social security for a world in transition

By ISSA The International Social Security Association (ISSA) has launched its Annual review 2025, showcasing a year of strong achievements, innovation and global collaboration in social security. The Annual Review, titled Social security for a world in transition, highlights how the ISSA has supported its members in responding to profound demographic, economic and technological changes shaping societies worldwide. A dynamic year for the global ISSA community The review presents 2025 as an impactful year for the ISSA, marked by high levels of engagement, new...

May 8, 2026
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08May

Pension Systems, Demographic Aging, and the Home Bias Puzzle: Global Evidence

By Brian Peters This paper tests whether pension system growth mediates the relationship between demographic aging and cross-border portfolio diversification. Using a panel of up to 188 countries from 1990 to 2024, we find that demographic aging robustly predicts pension system growth (Z₁ = +69.2***, p = 0.0002, N = 1,225, 42 countries), establishing the first stage of the mediation chain. However, pension fund growth does not uniformly translate into changes in external portfolio allocation: the second stage (pension spending...

May 8, 2026
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March 2026
20Mar

Mexico, how are we doing on retirement savings?

By México, ¿cómo vamos? Mexico is a country where half of the population is under 35 years old, 8 out of 10 people use the internet, and almost all of them connect through their cell phones. It's no surprise that the use of digital accounts has tripled in the last three years, opening up unprecedented potential for savings within the financial system. However, 54-5% of the employed population works in the informal sector, without access to social security or automatic...

March 20, 2026
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13Mar

Why Social Security Is Essential to Measuring Wealth Inequality

By Knowledge at Wharton Staff In this Q&A, professor Sylvain Catherine discusses why including Social Security fundamentally changes how we measure wealth inequality. His paper “Social Security and Trends in Wealth Inequality” was co-authored by Max Miller and Natasha Sarin and recently won the Dimensional Fund Advisors First Prize from the American Finance Association. The paper was previously awarded the Marshall Blume Prize in Financial Research from Wharton’s Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research, given annually to the best...

March 13, 2026
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06Mar

War and Digital Financial Inclusion: Role of Digital Financial Services in War and Armed Conflict

By Peterson K Ozili This article explores the trend in digital financial inclusion during war. It also explores the importance and challenges of digital financial inclusion during war. War and armed conflict adversely affect people. Their struggle to survive the war becomes even more difficult when they are unable to visit a bank branch to access formal financial services during war due to lockdowns and curfews that lead to the closure of physical financial access points. This study gathers insights...

March 6, 2026
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January 2026
30Jan

Pension Schemes, Healthcare Use, and Health: Evidence from China

By Zeen He Using a non-parametric fuzzy regression discontinuity design and leveraging data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), this paper explores the impact of public and private pension schemes on health service utilization and health outcomes among urban and rural individuals in China. Our estimates show that receipt of public pensions, particularly the Urban Employee Pension Scheme (UEPS) and Public Employee Pension Scheme (PEPS), significantly improves selfreported health, mental health (CES-D scores), and physical health (ADL...

January 30, 2026
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23Jan

Social Protection for Informal Workers

By Abhijeet U Pai The modern working relationships require the law to recognise non-standard forms of employment and address the lack of traditional employment benefits like social protection for them. Informal employment is seen as a job-based (based on nature of job rather than status of the enterprise) concept that cuts across different sectors of economic activity and thus is defined as ‘informal economy’ rather than ‘informal sector’, in terms of employment relationship and protections associated with the job of the...

January 23, 2026
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16Jan

Underpensioned: Analysis of Pensions Wealth data

By Pensions Policy Institute This Technical Report provides details of analysis undertaken for now:pensions as part of the Underpensioned Series of reports. John Adams, Senior Policy Analyst, at the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI), carried out the modelling and produced this report published in November 2025. The PPI is grateful for the input from Samantha Gould of now: pensions, in the production of this paper. Editing decisions remains with the author, who takes responsibility for any remaining errors or omissions. Sponsorship...

January 16, 2026
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16Jan

Explaining Digital Payments Adoption with Econometrics and Explainable Machine Learning: Cross-Country Evidence from a Global Household Survey

By Saida Hajjaji This paper studies the determinants of individual adoption of digital payments using the Global Findex Database 2025, released by the World Bank and based on nationally representative household surveys conducted in 2024 across 141 economies. We combine a standard econometric approach with explainable machine learning (ML) methods in order to provide both transparent global benchmarks and granular, policy-relevant insights into digital payment behaviours. We first estimate a parsimonious logistic regression model on a broad multi-country sample of 5,189...

January 16, 2026
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