Pensions at a Glance Asia/Pacific 2018

Many of Asia’s retirement-income systems are ill prepared for the rapid population ageing that will occur over the next two decades. The demographic transition – to fewer babies and longer lives – took a century in Europe and North America. In Asia, this transition will often occur in a single generation. Asia’s pension systems need modernising urgently to ensure that they are financially sustainable and provide adequate retirement incomes. This report examines the retirement-income systems of 18 countries in the region. The report provides new data for comparing pension systems of different countries. It combines the OECD’s expertise in modelling pension entitlements with a network of national pension experts who provided detailed information at the country level, verified key results and provided feedback and input to improve the analysis.
Gross pension wealth
Gross pension wealth, indicating the magnitude of the total pension promise, ranges, for men, from a high of 20.4 years of earnings in China for low earners to a low of 4 in Thailand for high earners. The value for women in China is actually even higher at 21.0, meaning that someone on 50% average earnings throughout the lifetime has a mandatory pension worth 21.0 times their earnings level at retirement, though the values in Viet Nam are even higher for women at 22.8 across all earnings levels.