June 2025

The At Retirement Reckoning: Barnett Waddingham’s investigation into the UK’s retirement landscape

By Barnett Waddingham The British pensions industry is, once again, at a critical juncture. It seems every provider, regulator, and adviser is watching with bated breath as the time bomb of UK retirement saving ticks closer to detonation. And with every new day, the likely ripple effects of the impending disaster get bigger. The past 14 years of Conservative rule saw the pension landscape shift notably. The introduction of auto-enrolment in 2012 successfully widened the UK’s saving base and helped tackle...

LGBTQ+ Aging and Retirement Issues: A Critical Review of Current Studies and Knowledge Gaps

By Julie Duda, Bri Bloxsom & Manshreya Grover This paper presents a detailed review of select studies on the experiences and challenges faced by LGBTQ+ older adults, particularly in the context of aging and retirement. Through a systematic analysis of fourteen studies, this review aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the issues encountered by this population, highlighting key themes including discrimination, healthcare access, social support, resilience, end-of-life preparation, and mental health. There exists a broad body of scholarly work that has shed light on...

Envejecimiento y Derechos de las Personas Mayores en América Latina y el Caribe

Por Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe   En este número del boletín se abarcan distintos temas sobre envejecimiento, personas mayores y sus derechos que se enmarcan en el proceso de seguimiento de la Conferencia Regional Intergubernamental sobre Envejecimiento y Derechos de las Personas Mayores, el Consenso de Montevideo sobre Población y Desarrollo y la Agenda 2030 para el Desarrollo Sostenible. En el artículo principal del boletín se analiza la magnitud y las características de la inserción de las personas...

Panorama del envejecimiento y los cuidados de larga duración

Por BID  América Latina y el Caribe está envejeciendo más rápido que cualquier otra región del mundo. Esta tendencia está impulsando un fuerte aumento en el número de personas mayores que necesitan ayuda con las actividades de la vida diaria. Sin embargo, la mayoría de los países de la región ofrecen servicios de atención muy limitados o nulos para este grupo demográfico que envejece. Las familias, y especialmente las mujeres, suelen intervenir para llenar el vacío. En el Banco Interamericano de...

PAYG Pensions in a Post-Growth Economy: A Case Study Analysis

By Christine Corlet Walker, Dario Leoni & Tim Jackson Ecological economists have increasingly warned that continual reliance on economic growth poses existential threats to environmental sustainability. A post-growth economy would instead prioritise environmental and societal prosperity over economic accumulation. But this transition demands a careful scrutiny of ‘growth dependencies’. One area in which this reliance on growth is potentially profound – particularly in the light of aging populations – is pension systems. In this paper, we therefore begin to address...

Retired for how long? Worker expectations for how long they’ll live in retirement

By Paul J. Yakoboski,  Annamaria Lusardi & Andrea Sticha The influence of perceptions is noteworthy given that one-third of adults underestimate general life expectancy among 65-year-olds (and an additional one-quarter respond “don’t know” when asked). Workers who expect relatively short lifespans due to misperceptions about general life expectancy are at risk of accumulating inadequate financial resources for retirement. Their retirement planning horizon is “too short.” In addition, those with shorter expected lifespans appear less likely to plan and save for retirement. For example, about...

Immigration and Adult Children’s Care for Elderly Parents: Evidence from Western Europe

By Andrea Berlanda, Elisabetta Lodigiani & Lorenzo Rocco In this paper, we use the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), complemented with register data on the share of the foreign population in the European regions, to examine the effects of migration on the level of informal care provided by children to their senior parents. Our main results show that migration decreases informal care among daughters with a university degree, while it increases the provision of informal care...

Sostenibilidad Financiera del Sistema de Pensiones en Ecuador

Por Franchesca Odalys Villarruel Bolaños, Mercedes Elizabeth Vargas Moreno, Angel Oswaldo Loor Saldarriaga, Nelly Carolina Abril Buenaño & Alex Estuardo Merino Garnica Una de las grandes y permanentes dificultades latentes en el Ecuador son las falencias existentes en el sistema de seguridad social, por lo que se ha presentado una vez más la polémica sobre la sostenibilidad financiera en lo concerniente al sistema de pensiones. Es necesario mencionar que, según información del IESS, el número de afiliados pasó de 2,7...

Pension funding gains, negative bond returns reshaping LDI landscape for managers

LDI managers are seeing their assets under management dip slightly as long-duration bond returns have lingered in negative territory for years, and fully funded corporate plan sponsors no longer need to add assets to their liability-hedging portfolios or are transferring assets to insurance companies. Liability-driven investing emerged as the key portfolio strategy among U.S. corporate plan sponsors who closed and/or froze their plans in the wake of the funding crisis that emerged following the dot-com recession of the early 2000s....

Trump Removed Crypto Warnings From Retirement Plans. Will That Affect 401(k)s?

In 2022, the Biden administration’s retirement plan regulators placed a warning sign on cryptocurrencies, urging plan overseers to exercise “extreme care” before making digital coins available inside 401(k) plans. “Cryptocurrencies are very different from typical retirement plan investments,” the Labor Department noted at the time, “and it can be extraordinarily difficult, even for expert investors, to evaluate these assets and separate the facts from the hype.” The Trump administration’s regulators have decided to rescind this guidance. The Labor Department, which oversees retirement...