Ageing populations, retirement incomes and public policy: what really matters

When setting public policies on retirement incomes, governments should focus on objectives they have a unique capacity to influence. Only governments can reliably eliminate poverty in old age, level the tax and regulatory playing fields for financial service providers/savers and gather impeccable, deep data. They can also help citizens to understand the things that really matter to individual saving decisions. Governments should avoid trying to influence or direct private provision for retirement by tax breaks or compulsion (‘hard’ or ‘soft’). That those common interventions seem not to work is only one of their many shortcomings. Then, citizens and employers should make their own decisions about financial provision for retirement.