This review examines the administrative expenses of the statutory pension schemes of Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland (so-called Pillar I schemes) and of the occupational pension schemes (so-called Pillar II schemes) that together form the overall pension provision in Finland.

In March of 2010, the Irish government announced that the age at which the state pension is paid would be raised to 66 in 2014, 67 in 2021 and 68 in 2028. Also during 2010, the economic news became increasingly bad as the full scale of the fiscal and banking crises in Ireland emerged. The question we address in this paper is whether expected retirement ages of Irish individuals aged 50 to 64 changed as a result of the policy announcement and/or the bad economic news.

This article examines the impact of labour, financial and demographic risks on retirement income from DC pension plans, with a special emphasis on labour-market risk. It uses a stochastic model that incorporates uncertainty about returns on investment, inflation, discount rates, life expectancy, employment prospects and real wages.

This paper develops a pension product that is explicit about the pre-established goals that are aimed for. The proposed product presents a trade-off that is transparent in terms of required contributions, the income level targeted and guarantees offered. Depending on participants' preferences, individualized investment plans are constructed that focus on achieving the desired standard of living in retirement with a likelihood that is ex-ante defined. In addition, the event of falling short of the goal is managed. To address the risk of failure to achieve the desired income target, guaranteed income is offered to safeguard a minimum standard of living in retirement.

Australia’s retirement income system is regarded by some as among the best in the world. It has achieved high individual saving rates and broad coverage at reasonably low cost to the government. Australia’s system does have shortcomings. It is heavily dependent on defined contribution plans and is vulnerable to weaknesses in such programs. Its government old-age pension is a means-tested benefit, which creates potentially troublesome incentives for workers with defined contribution accounts.

Automatic enrolment will see millions of people saving into a private pension for the first time and will make pension saving the norm. However, without further reform, automatic enrolment will create up to 50 million dormant pension pots by 2050.

Current government proposals for reform of the UK pension system are predicated, in part, on the view that simplification of the policy environment will help individuals take responsibility for their own retirement needs. This view currently enjoys widespread public support due to the complexity of the contemporary system of retirement provisions in the UK.

Fafo har på oppdrag for Pensjonskontoret undersøkt tidligpensjoneringsbeslutning i kommunal og fylkeskommunal sektor. Hovedformålet har vært å kartlegge og analysere hvilke faktorer som har betydning for henholdsvis å gå av tidlig, trappe gradvis ned eller fortsette i arbeid på fulltid etter fylte 62 år.

The design of default investment options in defined contribution (DC) pension plans is of critical policy relevance, as many members of DC plans are incapable or unwilling to choose investment strategies among the great variety offered to them. There is increasing international consensus that some type of life-cycle strategy is desirable for default options, with decreasing risk exposure as the individual ages. However, the specific allocation to risky assets (such as equities) at different ages is a matter of much debate, both in academic and policy circles. There is also an on-going debate on the relative merits of deterministic investment strategies with a fixed glide-path over the life-cycle and dynamic strategies that take into account some supposedly long-term features of asset returns, such as mean-reversion.

The Dutch pension sector was hit hard by the financial crises of 2008 and 2011. The effects of these crises combined with the structural problems of aging and longevity caused some pension funds to fail. This caused a public debate about the collective pension schemes in the Netherlands. It also raised the question whether pension funds are too important to fail and/or too big to save and what the consequences are.

The U. S. economy experienced a shift away from employment with coverage under a defined benefit (DB) pension plan during 1991-2009. Defined contribution (DC) plan coverage seems not to have risen much, if at all, for married men in the recent decade. Overall, the percent of the labor force covered by any pension type fell over the period 2001-2009, with most of the shift occurring in 2001-2003, as indicated by data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID).