The Credit Suisse Research Institute (CSRI) has published a study calling for an urgent rethink on retirement provisions in the face of aging societies. Rising life expectancies and falling fertility rates have led to aging populations becoming a reality in many countries across the globe. What has so far primarily been an issue in developed countries is also becoming a concern for the developing world.

Governments worldwide will have to address questions associated with aging societies: how to ensure financial security for a growing number of retirees and how to establish a sustainable pension system for future generations. In its latest report, the CSRI takes an in-depth look at the most important pension and retirement-related questions and trends.

Specific findings include: * Changing demographic profiles are putting pressure on existing pension systems around the world. Policymakers have faced increasing opposition to reform pension systems.

However, the longer the debate is delayed, the more difficult it will become to reverse the negative consequences of postponement. * The most expedient approach to increase the sustainability of pension provision should be a gradual increase in retirement age.

This would simultaneously extend the savings phase and shorten the average pension-payment period. * Chronological age (determined by the calendar date a person was born and measured in days, months and years) fails to capture information about the well-being of an individual.

Basing normal retirement age on a universal and rigid threshold does therefore not live up to the multidimensionality of age. * The traditional concept of the three-stage lifecycle – education, working life and retirement – should be reconsidered and increasing provisions made for new forms of work (e.g. part-time or temporary employment) and further education that can ease the transition into a longer working life.

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