Ageing and Income: Financial Resources and Retirement in Nine OECD Countries 2001 is a landmark study of the material well-being of older people in Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. It uses a wealth of new data to shed light on the challenges that face policy-makers as they anticipate the coming retirement of the baby-boom generation.
The findings are often surprising. In all the countries surveyed, policies have been fundamentally successful: older people at all income levels tend to maintain or even increase their material standards of living once they stop working. This happens despite large differences in approaches to public policy, including the size of public pensions. The systems that provide resources to older people are considerably more complex than is usually taken into account in policy-making, and the effects of policy, while large, are less direct than often thought. Demography and changing labour market patterns make reforms to these systems imperative.
The challenge is to make needed changes without undermining past success. This is difficult, but entirely possible; the payoffs from relatively small changes in the balance between work and retirement could be particularly large. The study examines the many diverse ways in which the nine countries are tackling this challenge and the lessons that have been learned from their experiences. It provides invaluable evidence for policy-makers, researchers and citizens concerned about the challenges posed for societies by ageing populations.
In 2000, the OECD published Reforms for an Ageing Society, which reports on national progress in implementing the policy principles set out in Maintaining Prosperity in an Ageing Society. A questionnaire was sent to Member countries in 1999 asking them to report on recent reforms. A benchmarking device was used where countries were asked to compare actual reforms against a set of ambitious, hypothetical reforms that were described in the questionnaire. Countries were also asked to identify lessons arising from these reforms that could be shared with other countries. Reforms for an Ageing Society describes the many reforms and lessons that were provided by countries, and sets them in the context of recent trends.
In 1998, the OECD published Maintaining Prosperity in an Ageing Society, which reported on its work on the policy implications of ageing. This work was "horizontal"in the sense that a number of OECD directorates with both social and economic mandates were heavily involved. The analysis that was undertaken built on a number of existing OECD studies, on reviews of the literature and on original research conducted internally and by consultants.
The report concluded with a series of policy principles related to work and retirement, jobs for older workers, fiscal consequences of ageing, the structure of pensions and other forms of retirement income, health, financial market implications and the strategic frameworks for reform. In 2000, Reforms for an Ageing Society reported on national progress in against these policy principles in all OECD countries. In 2001, Ageing and Income: Financial Resources and Retirement in 9 OECD Countries provided an in-depth, comparative examination of the issues that had been raised.
Policy brief on Maintaining Prosperity in an Ageing Society
What can be done to promote better employment prospects for older workers?
