Foreword

This ninth 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 impact of COVID-19 on pensions and of recent pension reforms (Chapter 1) and an in-depth analysis of automatic adjustment in pension systems (Chapter 2).

This report is the joint work of staff in both the Pensions Team of the Social Policy Division of the OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs and of the Insurance, Private Pensions and Financial Markets Division of the OECD Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs. National officials – particularly delegates to 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 Maciej Lis with contributions from Yuta Fujiki. Chapter 2 entitled “Automatic adjustment mechanisms in pension systems” was written by Wouter De Tavernier. Chapters 3 to 8 were written and the indicators therein computed by Andrew Reilly with contributions from Yuta Fujiki, while Chapter 9 was written by Romain Despalins with inputs from Pablo Antolin and Stéphanie Payet. Hervé Boulhol led the team and was responsible for revising and enhancing these chapters under the leadership of Stefano Scarpetta (Director of ELS), Mark Pearson (Deputy Director of ELS) and Monika Queisser (Senior Counsellor and Head of Social Policy). Maxime Ladaique provided extensive support for tables and figures. Liv Gudmundson prepared the manuscript for publication with inputs from Lucy Hulett. Alastair Wood prepared the work on infographics.

We are grateful to many national officials including ELSAC Delegates and to colleagues in the OECD Secretariat for their useful comments, notably Eliana Barrenho and Christian Geppert (ELS), Pablo Antolin, Romain Despalins, Elsa Favre-Baron, Diana Hourani, Jessica Mosher and Stéphanie Payet (DAF). The OECD gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the European Union, which co-financed this project with the OECD.