This study of the material well-being of older people in nine OECD countries uses a wealth of contemporary data to shed light on the challenges facing policymakers as they anticipate the coming retirement of the baby-boom generation.

This study of the material well-being of older people in nine OECD countries - Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States - uses a wealth of contemporary data to shed light on the challenges facing policymakers as they anticipate the coming retirement of the baby-boom generation. The findings are often surprising. In all the countries surveyed, policies have been fundamentally successful, with older people at all income levels tending to maintain or even increase their material standard of living once they stop working. This happens despite large differences in approaches to public policy, including the size of public pensions. The systems that provide resources to older people are considerably more complex than is usually taken into account in policymaking, and the effects of policy, while large, are less direct than often thought. This text examines the diverse ways in which the nine countries are tackling this challenge and the lessons that have been learned from their experiences.