May 2025

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...

Annual survey on financial incentives for retirement savings. Country profiles 2024

By Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Countries provide financial incentives to encourage individuals to save for retirement in asset-backed pension plans. Financial incentives for retirement savings can take the form of tax incentives, which are indirect subsidies through the tax code, or non-tax incentives, which are direct government payments into pension accounts. This annual survey provides an overview of the tax treatment of retirement savings and covers non-tax incentives to promote retirement savings in OECD countries and four accession...

Income and Wealth Inequality in the United States: An Update Including the 2022 Wave

By Moritz Kuhn & José-Victor Ríos-Rull We provide a comprehensive overview of earnings, income and wealth inequality based on the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances from the United States. We document the current state of inequality and its evolution over the last three decades organizing the data along key demographic dimensions including age, education, and marital status. The 2022 data reveal that wealth remains highly concentrated, with the top 1% holding 35% of total wealth down from a peak of...

The Early Retirement Gap: Does Job Satisfaction Matter Less for the Self-Employed?

By Raquel Justo, Adrian Merida & Juan A. Sanchis-Llopis Understanding the drivers of early retirement is increasingly important in the context of aging populations and growing concerns over pension sustainability. While extensive research has examined the retirement behavior of paid employees, the self-employed, who operate under distinct work arrangements and institutional contexts, remain comparatively understudied. This work examines whether job satisfaction influences actual retirement behavior differently for self-employed individuals and paid employees. Leveraging longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Ageing...

Does Education Improve Financial Outcomes? Evidence from Stock Market and Retirement Accounts in Türkiye

By Abdurrahman Aydemir & Yarsan Ersan We examine the causal effect of education on financial outcomes related to stock markets and retirement savings, leveraging a major compulsory school reform and a unique data set covering the universe of investors in Türkiye. The estimates show no effects on participation rates, portfolio composition, or return performance. Moreover, education does not appear to influence behavioral biases or heuristics in retirement plans. The reform leads to a 3% increase in pension savings for females,...

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...

A Canadian Approach to Rethinking Technology Design for Aging Populations

By Milena Head Older adults are the fastest-growing segment of the population. In Canada, one in five people are 65 or older, and by 2065, this will increase to more than one in four. Yet, despite their growing numbers, older adults often face exclusion and marginalization in technology design. This digital divide has significant consequences, leading to isolation, loneliness, frustration, and poor health outcomes, particularly when we intersect factors like lower socioeconomic status, race, gender, and immigrant status. Source: @SSRN

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...

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...

Alfabetización financiera y ahorro para el retiro de los mexicanos durante la pandemia de Covid-19

Por Elena Moreno García & Sergio Hernández Mejía Esta investigación tiene como objetivo analizar como cambió el ahorro para el retiro de los mexicanos durante el periodo de pandemia y determinar si el cambio estuvo en función de su nivel de alfabetización financiera, su educación financiera y sus características socioeconómicas y demográficas. Se estima un modelo Logit multinomial con datos de la Encuesta Nacional de Inclusión Financiera correspondientes a 2021 y 2018. Los resultados evidencian un aumento significativo del 5.76%...