July 2026
06Jul

The other side of longevity: more years of life, but also greater inequality

Longevity is one of the great economic and scientific achievements of the last century, but it risks becoming a new source of deep social division. Today, it is no longer enough to focus on how long we will live: the real question is who will be able to live longer in good health and who, on the other hand, will accumulate, over the course of their lives, disadvantages that are bound to result in additional years of frailty. This was...

July 6, 2026
News,
Read more...

June 2026
15Jun

Retirement Wealth Across Europe: A Country-by-Country Comparison

Retirement wealth differs greatly across European nations, affecting living standards in ways that go beyond what pension income alone can provide, according to the European Central Bank's Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) released in mid-2023. In certain countries, older households possess more than 30 times the wealth of their counterparts elsewhere, illustrating how housing, pensions, and family assistance influence financial security in later years. Within the euro area, households aged 65 to 74 have a median net wealth of EUR185,300....

June 15, 2026
News, ,
Read more...
02Jun

South Korea. [Retirement Pension Investment Strategy] “During Booms, Focus on Indexes… Systematic Investing Is Key to Beating Volatility”

Last year, for the first time ever, the accumulated amount of retirement pension funds in Korea surpassed 500 trillion won, illustrating the continuous growth of the domestic retirement pension market. In addition, the Korean stock market has been experiencing a record-breaking bull run, and the domestic exchange-traded fund (ETF) market has also expanded to 500 trillion won, leading to greater public interest in financial investment than ever before. However, despite this rapid growth, the polarization of returns among retirement...

June 2, 2026
News, ,
Read more...

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
Articles, System Characterization, , , ,
Read more...

March 2026
20Mar

Non-contributory Pension Programs and Intra-household Inequality

By José L. Casco Non-contributory pension schemes are increasingly prevalent as countries seek to combat poverty, yet their role in shaping inequality remains underexplored. This paper studies how such programs alter intra-household inequality using data from Mexican household income and expenditure surveys. The analysis first examines a local pension program in Mexico City, embedding an age-based quasi-experimental design to identify beneficiaries within a structural model of extended households. Results show that the program shifted resources from men to women and...

March 20, 2026
Articles, Pension Management, , , ,
Read more...
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
Articles, System Characterization, , , , ,
Read more...
06Mar

Closing the gender income gap: from paycheck to pension

By Allianz Research Women have made measurable progress over recent decades in narrowing gender pay gaps and increasing labor-force participation – but structural gaps persist. Across the OECD, the unadjusted gender pay gap – the percentage difference between the average earnings of all men and all women without accounting for differences in job type, hours worked, experience or seniority – has declined from 21% in the early 2000s to 13.7% in 2024, and female labor-force participation has risen steadily to 71%, compared with 81% of men. However, single metrics do not capture the full economic impact...

March 6, 2026
Books, Books, Labor Market, Reports, , , ,
Read more...
02Mar

Europe must close the rights gap for migrants and asylum seekers with disabilities

Migrants and asylum seekers with disabilities continue to face systemic exclusion from protection, support, and integration systems across the European Union, despite the EU’s human rights obligations. In response, IRAP and EDF have jointly launched a new policy brief, “A Pact That Excludes: Closing the Protection Gap for Migrants and Asylum Seekers with Disabilities in the European Union,” showing that EU migration and asylum systems remain largely inaccessible and discriminatory for people with disabilities. This briefing analyses the EU Pact on Migration and...

March 2, 2026
News, ,
Read more...

February 2026
27Feb

Fairness Views, Pension Benefits, and Heterogeneity in Life Expectancy

By Maria Chaykina Notional Defined Contribution (NDC) pension schemes convert accumulated pension wealth into an annuity, based on an average life expectancy at retirement. When longevity differs across social groups, a single conversion factor implies systematic transfers from shorter-lived to longer-lived individuals. This motivates proposals to differentiate benefits by socio-demographic characteristics related to life expectancy. We study whether such differentiation is perceived as fair using a survey experiment involving 3,004 Italian residents aged 18-66. Respondents completed an incentivised allocation task...

February 27, 2026
Articles, Pension design, , ,
Read more...

December 2025
23Dec

Why is inequality so high in Latin America? An interview with Francisco H. G. Ferreira

Economic inequality in Latin America has historically been – and is currently – higher than in much of the rest of the world. For a time, it seemed that large pro-poor programmes, particularly conditional cash transfers (CCTs) – conditional mainly on attending schools and health visits – made some dent on inequality. Such CCTs were pioneered in Mexico, though it has now discontinued that policy, and have been pursued in a major way in Brazil, Colombia, Chile and elsewhere....

December 23, 2025
News, , ,
Read more...