Optimising Bangladesh’s Universal Pension Framework: From Lessons to Actions
By Samiha Chowdhury
Social protection for the elderly, in the form of the Old-age Allowance (OAA) Programme, has been operational in Bangladesh since 1998, offering monthly financial support to senior citizens from poor and vulnerable households. As of FY24, the programme has approximately 5.8 million elderly people as beneficiaries, each receiving Tk.600 per month distributed on a quarterly basis. Apart from this, retirement benefits for the government employees and their families can also be considered a social protection programme for senior citizens. However, following the identification of a lack in support for over 70 per cent of elderly individuals (aged 65 for male, and 62 for female) of Bangladesh, and a high targeting error in old-age allowance programmes with the exclusion error being 58.6 per cent, the National Social Security Strategy (NSSS) has introduced the Universal Pension Scheme (UPS), a comprehensive pension system to ensure a minimum income for seniors, especially from impoverished households. The discussion in this article will focus on, including other things, how UPS can be improved further with lessons from global examples.
Source SSRN
