November 2025
28Nov

Financial sustainability for the expansion of non-contributory pension systems and the eradication of old-age poverty

By Alberto Arenas de Mesa, Ernesto Espíndola & Juan Ignacio Vila Income protection is a substantive factor and a priority of social protection systems in Latin America and the Caribbean, in particular at either end of the life cycle (i.e. childhood and old age). This is due to the greater vulnerability and lower earning capacity of these population segments compared with other age groups, among other factors (Santos Garcia, Farías and Robles, 2023). In these circumstances, pension systems, in particular...

November 28, 2025
Articles, System Sustainability, , , , ,
Read more...

July 2025
25Jul

Pensions in Spain: A Reform that Backfires

By Julián Díaz Saavedra & Javier Díaz-Giménez After the pension policy reversal that took place at the end of the past decade, the Spanish government approved a pack of new parametric changes to its public pension system, to cope with the present and future Spanish pension system imbalance. To study these changes, we use a large-scale overlapping generations model calibrated to the Spanish Economy, and show that this pension reform backfires. This is because these changes bring no significant variation...

July 25, 2025
Articles, System Sustainability, , , ,
Read more...
15Jul

Retirement Then, Now, and Next

By Teresa Ghilarducci & The SCEPA Team  Late Baby Boomers (age 59-67), Generation X (age 43-58) and Millennials (age 27-42) are retiring under much worse conditions than Early Baby Boomers (between age 68-76 in 2022). This fact gets obscured by research that paints an optimistic picture of retirement security that only really existed for Early Baby Boomers. Later generations have been impacted by changes to the conditions of retirement that Early Baby Boomers did not experience. This includes: the shift...

July 15, 2025
Articles, System Sustainability, , , ,
Read more...

May 2025
30May

Eyes on delivery – improving implementation for effective social protection for all

By Abhijit V. Banerjee Effective implementation is the missing link in the drive toward inclusive, reliable social protection. In recent decades, social protection systems have expanded rapidly across the developing world. Today, more than 2.5 billion people benefit from programmes like cash transfers, food subsidies, and social pensions. Yet despite this progress, the goal of social protection for all remains out of reach. Too many eligible people still slip through the cracks—excluded by complex procedures, poor targeting, or weak delivery...

May 30, 2025
Books, Books, Reports, System Sustainability, ,
Read more...
23May

European semester thematic factsheet adequacy and sustainability of pensions

Pensions are the main source of income for older people in Europe, coming mostly from 'pay-as-you-go' public schemes. Retired people drawing a pension are a significant and — due to demographic ageing — a growing part of the EU population (about 124 million, or a quarter of the total population1). European pension systems are facing the dual challenge of remaining financially sustainable and being able to provide Europeans with an adequate income in retirement. The key purpose of pension...

May 23, 2025
Adequacy, Books, Books, System Sustainability, , , ,
Read more...
23May

Decoding Pension Funds: Sustainability Indicators for Annual Report Analysis

By Leticia Martins Medeiros, Clea Beatriz Macagnan & Rosane Seibert Pension funds' growth highlights the need to emphasize fiduciary duty and investment sustainability, considering the current and future participants' interests (priority stakeholders) and systemic risk reduction (environmental, social, economic, and governance effects). Therefore, this study builds sustainability indicators based on the interests of pension fund stakeholders. The methodology comprised five stages: the first consisted of analyzing Annual Information Reports to create a preliminary list of indicators; the second involved examining...

May 23, 2025
Articles, System Sustainability, , ,
Read more...

April 2025
11Apr

The Social Security Retirement Age

By Congressional Research Service The Social Security full retirement age (FRA) is the age at which workers can first claim full (i.e., unreduced) Social Security retired-worker benefits.1 Among other factors, the age at which an individual begins receiving Social Security benefits has an impact on the size of the monthly benefits. Claiming benefits before the FRA can substantially reduce monthly benefits, whereas claiming benefits after the FRA can lead to a substantial increase in monthly benefits. Benefit adjustments are made...

April 11, 2025
Books, Books, Labor Market, Reports, System Sustainability, , , ,
Read more...
04Apr

Postponing Retirement Under Age Discrimination and Grandparenting

By Leqing Huang To tackle the population aging and improve the sustainability of the pension system, the Chinese government proposes to postpone the statutory retirement age gradually. However, when implementing this policy in China, age discrimination in the job market and grandchild care culture are two potential concerns. Therefore, this paper builds a multi-period OLG model with these two crucial factors to provide a quantitative evaluation of the potential policy impacts on population growth, labor supply, and pension funds. The...

April 4, 2025
Articles, System Sustainability, , ,
Read more...

March 2025
14Mar

Pension Reform and Stock Market Development

By Shujaat Khan, Bo Li & Yunhui Zhao We highlight the strong connection between developing fully-funded, individually-owned, collectively-managed, mandatory/incentivized (FICMI) pension schemes and the development of domestic stock markets. We do so by building a stylized model and complementing the analysis with cross-country empirical analysis and case studies. We also highlight the challenges of individual impatience, network externalities, and coordination failure in long-term equity investments, which are crucial for stock market development and technological innovation. We find that FICMI pension...

March 14, 2025
Articles, System Sustainability, ,
Read more...

February 2025
07Feb

Challenges and concerns surrounding China’s retirement age reform

By China Labour Bulletin China is currently grappling with a pressing demographic challenge, marked by record-low birth rates and low retirement ages, leading to a continuous decline in the working-age population. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the working-age population dropped to 61.3% in 2023, down from 62% the previous year. The shrinking workforce and ageing population are increasingly straining China’s pension system. Current projections indicate that, without intervention, the social security system’s resources will be depleted by 2035. In response to...

February 7, 2025
Articles, System Sustainability, , , ,
Read more...