Our study contributes to the financial literacy literature by examining its association with retirement planning in an interesting and novel context, i.e. that of a country with a relatively old and rapidly ageing population, large regional disparities and a rapidly emerging financial market.

We examine the relationship between financial literacy and retirement planning in a representative sample of Swedish adults. We find significant differences in financial literacy between planners and non-planners.

Far-reaching changes in the regulation of financial markets and the organization of public pensions in the 1980s and 1990s transformed the landscape for retirement products in Sweden. First, banking and insurance were extensively deregulated in the 1980s, while the securities markets experienced major expansion.

European studies highlight a widening of relative inequalities in general mortality by socioeconomic status from the 1970s to the 1990s. Few studies are available for Southern European countries; they show that these countries represent an exception to these trends. Available evidence on this for Italy is for a specific city only and nationwide evidence does not exist yet. This paper examines the association between lifetime income and old age mortality risk, referred to as the income–mortality gradient, in Italy during the 1980s and 1990s. We investigate the shape of the gradient. Most importantly, we analyze the evolution of the gradient between these two decades.

By requiring individuals to decide whether to participate in (newly established) pension funds, how much to contribute and how to invest their retirement wealth, pension reforms have raised concerns about the ability of households to deal with financial decisions.

When looking at a researcher of today it is obvious that he/she is no longer staying at one university or other public or private research centre throughout his/her career, but is moving from one country to another, frequently and for shorter periods of time or is even working (be it sometimes under different statuses) in several countries at the same time. When the researcher of today retires his/her career path has been one of many different employers and can even be one of different statuses (employee, selfemployed,…).

Valget mellom å gå av med pensjon eller fortsette i arbeid påvirkes av en rekke faktorer. Denne analysen viser at helsetilstanden, tidspunktet for ektefellens pensjonsbeslutning og om man er ansatt i en bedrift med avtalefestet pensjon, er de tre som har hatt størst effekt på denne avgjørelsen. Dette er hovedkonklusjonen fra en analyse basert på data fra 2001 til 2011, som beregner sannsynligheten for at arbeidstakere i alderen 61 til 69 år fortsatt står i jobb ett år senere.

We examine financial literacy in Germany using data from the SAVE survey. We find that knowledge of basic financial concepts is lacking among women, the less educated, and those living in East Germany.

Using 1977-2011 data from the Current Population Survey, this paper investigates the often-repeated claim that delayed retirement by baby boomers will result in higher unemployment among the young, a claim which has been garnering increased attention from the media during the Great Recession.

We present new evidence on financial literacy and retirement preparation in the Netherlands based on two surveys conducted before and after the onset of the financial crisis. We document that while financial knowledge did not increase from 2005 to 2010, significantly more individuals planned for their retirement in 2010.

Over the past two decades, pension reforms have been at the top of the agenda of social policy makers in Europe. In many countries, these reforms have resulted in less generous public pensions. At the same time, minimum income protection for the elderly has received attention from policy makers, but much less so from social policy researchers.

Economic theory says that participants in 401(k) plans should gradually rebalance their portfolios away from stocks and toward less risky bonds as they approach retirement. Conventional target date funds attempt to do so by automatically rebalancing the household’s portfolio periodically, but they take account of only one aspect of the individual: his expected retirement age.