This edition of Pensions at a Glance is dedicated to the memory of Edward Whitehouse, who died in September 2025, aged 56.
Ed worked at the OECD in the 1990s and 2000s, becoming Head of Pension Policy Analysis. He co‑ordinated and actually wrote much of the first few editions of Pensions at a Glance, establishing it not only as the place to go to find international comparisons of pension systems but also insightful analysis of particular areas of pensions policy. He was remarkable in combining analytic excellence with elegant and clear explanations of complex issues. His legacy will persist, at the OECD but also in the wider pensions’ community, which continues to rely heavily on the analytic models he developed.
This eleventh edition of Pensions at a Glance provides a range of indicators for comparing pension policies and their outcomes between OECD countries. The indicators are also, where possible, provided for the other major economies that are members of the G20. Two special chapters provide a review of the pace of population ageing and of recent pension reforms (Chapter 1) and an in-depth analysis of gender differences in pensions (Chapter 2).
This report was prepared by the OECD Social Policy Division within the Directorate of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs (ELS). Hervé Boulhol led the team and was responsible for revising and enhancing the chapters under the leadership of Monika Queisser (Senior Counsellor and Head of Social Policy). National officials – particularly delegates to the OECD Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Committee and the OECD Working Party on Social Policy and members of the OECD pension expert group – provided invaluable input to the report.
Chapter 1 on “Recent pension reforms” was written by Wouter De Tavernier. Chapter 2 entitled “Gender pension gap” was written by Maciej Lis with contributions from Cemre Dane who was then an intern from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Chapters 3 to 8 were written and the indicators therein computed by Andrew Reilly, while Chapter 9 was written by Romain Despalins with inputs from Pablo Antolin and Stéphanie Payet from the Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs (DAF). Maxime Ladaique provided support for tables and figures. Hanna Varkki, Marie‑Aurélie Elkurd and Alastair Wood prepared the manuscript for publication and the infographics.
We are grateful to many national officials, to Carole Bonnet (INED), Emmanuel Bretin and Frédérique Nortier Ribordy (Conseil d’orientation des retraites) for their useful comments as well as to colleagues in the OECD Secretariat, notably Romain Despalins, Stéphanie Payet and Jessica Mosher (DAF), Valerie Frey and Jasmin Thomas (ELS). This publication also benefited from comments by Stefano Scarpetta (Director of ELS) and Mark Pearson (Deputy Director of ELS). The OECD gratefully acknowledges the support from the European Union.