The Public-Private Mix of Retirement Income in Nine OECD Countries: Some Evidence from Micro-data and on Exploration of its Implications

Over the past three decades, the wellbeing of people over retirement age has improved, not only absolutely but also relatively. Being old is no longer synonymous with being poor. This improvement has occurred across almost all of the main OECD countries, and has occurred almost regardless of the type of pension system that is operating in the country concerned. This chapter seeks to illustrate the importance or other wise of the nature of the public-private mix in incomes in old age both in producing this improvement in wellbeing and in leading to differences in the level of wellbeing enjoyed by different types of person. It draws from a number of studies undertaken at the Social Policy Division of the OECD in the course of 2000 and 2001, many of which have been reported upon in OECD (2001) and Yamada and Casey (2002).