Pensions at a Glance 2025: Slovenia
Table of contents
This country note shows how Slovenia compares with other OECD countries in Pensions at a Glance 2025. This edition covers recent pension reforms and includes a focus on gender pension gaps.
Slovenia has legislated a comprehensive pension reform that improves both the financial sustainability and the equity of the system. According to the EC 2024 Ageing Report, Slovenia was before the reform the EU country with the third highest projected increase in pension expenditure by 2045. Slovenia decided in September 2025 to increase its age thresholds in the pension system by two years between 2028 and 2035 while maintaining relatively short career-length conditions. The statutory retirement age will increase from 65 to 67 conditional on 15 years of contributions, and retirement will be possible without penalty with 40 years of contributions from age 62 instead of 60 previously. The reform does not change the normal retirement age for Slovenia, however, as after a full career from age 22 the old-age pension is still accessible without penalty at age 62 at the earliest. The normal retirement age thus remains one of the lowest in the OECD, at 62 years as in Colombia (for men, 57 for women), Greece, Luxembourg and Türkiye, much below the OECD averages of 64.7 years (for men, 63.9 years for women). Overall, based on already legislated measures, the average normal retirement age in the OECD will increase by almost two years to 66.4 and 65.9 for men and women, respectively, entering the labour market in 2024. Half of OECD countries will increase the normal retirement age based on current legislation.
Source: Figure 2.1.
Source: Table 4.4.
The 2025 reform has modified how the pension is calculated and adjusted the indexation of pensions in payment. The reference wage period for the calculation of benefits has been extended from the best 24 to the best 35 years, tightening the link between contribution and benefits and improving equity. As a result, only public pensions in Colombia, Costa Rica, France and Spain among OECD countries are based on less than 30 years of earnings. Longer contribution period provides reduces benefits particularly among those with substantial increase in earnings during the career. Meanwhile, people with persistently low earnings remain protected by the floor in the calculation of pensionable earnings, set as high as 76.5% of the average wage. This extension of the reference-wage period will reduce pension expenditure. Moreover, changes in pension indexation will also generate savings. Pensions in payment are currently adjusted to 60% of wage growth and 40% of price inflation. From 2026 onwards, these percentages are gradually adjusted each year until pensions are indexed to 20% of wage growth and 80% of price inflation by 2045.
These measures lowering pension benefits are partially offset by the increase in the accrual rate. From 2028 to 2035, total accruals over a 40-year career increases from 63.5% to 70.0% of the reference wage. Overall, the future net replacement rate of a full-career average and low earner increases by 6 and 8 percentage points, respectively, to 71% and 100%. Additionally, survivor’s benefits are increased from 70% to 75% of the deceased spouse’s pension in 2026 and to 80% in 2027, while the eligibility age for survivor’s pensions will increase by two years. Overall, according to government projections, the pension reform will reduce pension expenditure by about 1% of GDP in 2070.
The gender pension gap in Slovenia is among the lowest across OECD countries. Women receive monthly pensions that are about one-quarter lower than men’s on average across OECD countries, ranging from 10% (or less) lower in Czechia, Estonia, Iceland, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia to more than 35% lower in Austria, Mexico, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and even 47% lower in Japan. It is 10% in Slovenia. Gender differences in lifetime earnings are the main driver of the gender pension gap as a large part of pension benefits is earnings-related. Differences in the expected duration of working life, hours worked and hourly wages between men and women combine into large gender gaps in expected lifetime earnings averaging 35% across OECD countries, while Slovenia has the second lowest, at 17%. In fact, Slovenia has very low gender gaps in three components of lifetime earnings: expected career length, hours worked and wages. Despite very low GPG, the gender gap in disposable income among the 66+ in Slovenia, at 11%, is very close to the average across OECD countries, likely related to the fact that Slovenia is second only to Latvia in the European Union in terms of the share of older people living alone.
The most significant decrease in the gender pension gap (GPG) between 2007 and 2024 took place in Germany and Slovenia where narrowed it fell by more than 15 percentage points. Slovenia increased the retirement age for women more than for men since 1999, thereby reducing gender differences, and introduced additional pension credits for combining part-time work and childcare in 2012. In 2019, Slovenia decided to eliminate from 2025 women’s earlier access to pensions and higher accrual rate (which was in place to limiting the impact of the lower retirement age on pension entitlements). Slovenia was the last OECD country to provide a higher accrual rate to women. According to projections referenced in the report, the downward trends in employment and wage differences between men and women would nearly eliminate the GPG by 2050 in Slovenia.
Parents have special pension eligibility conditions in Slovenia. Mothers or fathers receive a bonus equal to a one-year accrual for each of the first three children. If, however, both parents forgo this bonus, one of them can retire earlier than a childless person, for example by 16 months in the case of having two children and reaching the contribution length requirement of 40 years before age 60. Providing parents with earlier access to pensions is difficult to justify. By comparison, mothers can retire between four months and four years earlier than childless women, depending on the country and the number of children, in Czechia, France, Italy and the Slovak Republic. However, mothers with a five-year break can only access pensions later than full-career mothers in Slovenia as they would miss the 40-year contribution requirement. This is because childcare-related credits offset only part of employment breaks. A 40-year contribution record is required to retire before the statutory retirement age of 67 in the future and pension credits cover one year of contributions per child. Hence, a mother of two children taking a five-year break will have to retire three years later than a full-career woman.
Slovenia is among the nine OECD countries that give credits just for having had children or provide pension bonuses to parents, irrespective of whether a career break occurred. This instrument benefits mothers without disincentivising work. Beyond Slovenia, extra years of credit are given in Austria, France, Germany and Korea, a more favourable conversion factor is applied in Italy, and a pension bonus is given in Czechia, Hungary and Spain. Childcare-related credits compensate for about half of pension entitlements lost during a 5-year childcare-related break on average across OECD countries. Such credits can be also expanded to cover reduced hours needed to reconcile care and work, as e.g. in Germany, Portugal and Slovenia.
Old-age income inequality below OECD average
Very low average effective age of labour market exit and fast population ageing
Low normal retirement age
High future replacement rates, especially for low earners
Contact
Maciej LIS (✉ maciej.lis@oecd.org)
Hervé BOULHOL (✉ herve.boulhol@oecd.org)
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The full book is available in English: OECD (2025), Pensions at a Glance 2025: OECD and G20 Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/e40274c1-en.
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