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.
Methodology and assumptions
The indicators of pension entitlements that follow here in Chapter 2 use the OECD cohort-based pension models. The methodology and assumptions are common to the analysis of all economies, allowing the design of pension systems to be compared directly. This enables the comparison of future entitlements under today’s parameters and rules.