May 2026
20May

UK. Asking people to save 12% of salary into pensions could tackle looming retirement poverty crisis

Poverty in retirement could be drastically reduced if minimum work pension contributions were boosted, a new report finds. Some 12.2 million people or nearly a third of adults face hardship in later life on current forecasts. That is the number of people heading for an income of less than the Pensions UK benchmark for a basic standard of living - £13,400 if you are single or £21,600 for a couple. The figures do not account for income tax, housing or care costs. However,...

May 20, 2026
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April 2026
29Apr

Crypto-assets and decentralised finance. Report on stablecoins, crypto-investment products and multifunction groups : October 2025

By European Systemic Risk Board Financial stability risks are mounting in 2025 as crypto-assets, including stablecoins, go mainstream, buoyed by forceful US policy measures. By mid-2025, the crypto-asset market had reached record valuations, largely driven by US pro-crypto policies aimed at boosting demand for US Treasuries and reinforcing the dollar’s dominance. In this context, the ESRB’s General Board noted in June 2025 that the growing links between the crypto sector and the financial sector should be closely monitored. It also voiced...

April 29, 2026
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29Apr

Gambling for Retirement: The Economics of Savings Lotteries

By Jared Gars, Justin Holz, Rodemeier & Juan Miguel Villa Governments frequently use lottery-like incentives to encourage socially desirable behavior ("Pigouvian lotteries"). We study lotteries that encourage retirement savings in a nationwide field experiment with over 380,000 participants in Colombia's public pension system. Lotteries increase savings during the qualification period, but this effect is almost entirely offset by subsequent declines in savings, as workers strategically shift the timing of deposits. Lotteries also crowd out demand for valuable life and disability...

April 29, 2026
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17Apr

Opt-in or Opt-out? The Power of Defaults in Pension Enrollment Choices

By Tabea Bucher-Koenen, Luisa Wallossek & Joachim Winter Default settings strongly increase pension enrollment, especially when savings incentives are high and choices are complex. We show that the effect is weaker when incentives are low, options are simple, and opting out is easy. We study the nationwide introduction of auto-enrollment for lowincome employees in Germany's public pay-as-you-go pension system. We find that automatic enrollment raises participation by 23 percentage points, though most individuals actively opt out. Linking administrative and survey data...

April 17, 2026
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07Apr

Old-age pensions in the Pacific: Ensuring dignity in later life

In Fiji, the Social Pension Scheme pension is having a huge impact on reducing poverty, with analysis suggesting poverty among older persons would be around 40 per cent higher without the scheme. The pension supports more than 58,000 older persons and, for many households, this support is essential. A recent community-level survey of 1,365 pension recipients found that 72 per cent are the sole income earners within their households. At the household level, the impacts are tangible. “The pension enables recipients to transition...

April 7, 2026
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March 2026
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
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February 2026
19Feb

How retirees are driving the US economy more than ever

Americans 70 and older now control an outsized share of the nation’s wealth, equities and housing assets, a shift driven by demographics, rising corporate profits and decades of soaring home and stock values, The Wall Street Journal writes. Federal Reserve data shows older households have steadily increased their share of net worth and market holdings, even as wealth has lagged for younger groups. Many retirees are also financially and physically healthier than prior generations: Most own their homes, often with little debt,...

February 19, 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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14Jan

Lords debate UK Pension Schemes Bill role in the future of LGPS

Peers have debated the UK government’s intervention in the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) as the Pension Schemes Bill reached the committee stage in the House of Lords this week. After a full debate on the key principles of the Bill, which took place during a second reading on 18 December, the Bill is now being scrutinised by the members of the House of Lords. During the reading, peers discussed several clauses concerning LGPS, with amendments proposed to clarify the reasoning...

January 14, 2026
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09Jan

Pension Saving in a Gendered Lifecourse

By Hayley James Despite automatic enrolment in work pension schemes, private saving for pensions in the UK is relatively low, with most people under-pensioned in later life and reliant on the state pension. In this book, Hayley James shows that equally significant is that women save far less for old age than men. Indeed, her detailed research reveals the ways in which pension saving, as an everyday practice of finance, is shaped by gender and how this evolves over the...

January 9, 2026
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