The object of this paper is to examine the impact of type of pension scheme on retirement behaviour. The well-documented decline in the labour-force participation of older women and older men (in particular) is common to most industrialised countries. The proportion of men aged 55 to 64 in...

While other regions — Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America in particular — have been active in pension reform, the Middle East and North Africa have lagged behind. In part this is because of the belief that favourable mean financial problems are still far in the future and pension...

A number of countries have introduced individual, privately managed defined-contribution accounts, where the value of the pension benefit will depend on accumulated contributions and investment returns. These schemes expose workers’ future pension benefits to a number of different risks. To...

Pension fund charges reduce the rate of return on pension accounts in some countries by up to by two percentage points. Do charges of this scale undermine the case for funded pension provision? How can governments hold back costs and charges? This paper looks at evidence from thirteen countries,...

Reforming pensions is one of the biggest challenges of the century. All OECD countries have to adjust to the ageing of their populations and re-balance retirement income provision to keep it adequate and ensure that the retirement income system is financially sustainable. Demographers have been...

A critical question in the transition to a funded, private pension system is whether the new private element is presented as a mandate or choice to current and future workers. This paper sets out the spectrum of available options and looks at policy in 13 reforming countries. It concludes that...

This paper surveys 11 international comparative studies of poverty, income distribution and the elderly. Although it focuses on OECD economies, some 44 countries are covered. The paper addresses a series of questions. What level are the incomes of the elderly relative to the population as a...

High charges for personal pensions were one factor in the personal pensions mis-selling debacle in the United Kingdom. They continued to arouse concern among politicians and commentators. The Labour government, with its new flagship ‘stakeholder’ pension, chose to regulate both the structure...

This report surveys a dozen international comparative studies of poverty, income distribution and the elderly in OECD countries. It updates a previous Department of Social Security report — Whiteford and Kennedy, 1995, based on data from the mid- to late-1980s — including information up to...

This second edition of Pensions at a Glance updates all the important indicators of retirement-income systems developed for the first edition. The values of all pension system parameters reflect the situation in the year 2004. The general approach adopted is a “microeconomic” one, looking at...