While Thailand's pension system is typically described as a multipillar pension scheme, its design is highly fragmented and offers adequate coverage only to a small segment of the population, including civil servants and high-income individuals. In its 2018 Article IV report, the IMF highlighted...

A pension system is at the heart of social protection. By ensuring income security for older persons and other vulnerable groups, it prevents poverty, reduces inequality, and facilitates consumption smoothing. A pension system also affects the working population's labor market choices and has...

This paper reviews past trends in public pension spending and provides projections for 27 advanced and 25 emerging economies over 2011-2050. In constructing these projections, the paper incorporates the impact of recent pension reforms and highlights the key assumptions underlying these...

This paper describes the appropriate maturity of IMF lending in capital account crises, and of the related issue of the mix between Supplemental Reserve Facility (SRF) and Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) resources. Several of the programs supported by exceptional access have been quite successful in...

The Thirty-Sixth Issue of Selected Decisions and Selected Documents of the International Monetary Fund includes decisions, interpretations, and resolutions of the Executive Board and the Board of Governors of the IMF, as well as selected documents relevant to the current activities of the Fund

This paper develops and tests a model of Japan’s household savings rate, based on the life-cycle hypothesis that the primary motive for savings is provision for retirement. The paper shows that Japan’s high household savings rate in recent decades reflects the positive influence of rapid...

In March 1999, Poland implemented a systemic pension reform that involved the introduction of a multi-pillar pension system to replace the defined benefit (DB), pay-as-you-go (PAYG) system that had been operating since 1949. This technical note on the pension sector was elaborated as part of the...

Despite their increasing fiscal burden, the public pension systems of BRO countries are failing to provide adequate social protection. Although there is a broad consensus about the need for pension reforms, BRO countries are debating whether to embark on systemic reforms or whether to correct...

This paper reviews the financial implications of aging for the pension system in Belgium during 1995-2050. Our simulations indicate a strong rise in pension expenditure over the next half century, as is the case in other industrialized countries. In Belgium, the problem is particularly acute in...