Identification and Assessment of Publicly Available Data Sources to Calculate Indicators of Private Pensions

Abstract

Considering the growing role of private and funded pension provision and the sensitivity of private pension provision to the economic climate, there is an increasing need of comparable and reliable information on private pension plans in order to better monitor retirement income adequacy and the role of private provision in retirement income. Key indicators of the extent to which private pension provision contributes to the adequacy of pensions are the level of coverage that private pensions have across countries‘ workforce, contributions made into pension funds and personal retirement accounts, and benefits paid to retirees. This paper provides the assessment of data sets available to estimate pension coverage, contributions and benefits in private pensions and discusses ways to use available data sets in order to better inform policy discussions on the role of private pensions on retirement benefit adequacy. It covers all EU-27 Member States and selected non-EU countries.