Providing better protection and promoting growth: A defence of Averting the old age crisis

This article briefly summarizes the recommendations of the recent World Bank report, Averting the old age crisis, analyses why representatives of the ISSA and the ILO came to quite different policy conclusions from that report, and takes up other selected issues. The article argues that there are four underlying reasons for the divergence between the World Bank and the ILO/ISSA positions: the Bank is more concerned about the impact of social security systems on the broader economy; the Bank is troubled by the inequities that we often find in current systems in practice, even though they may look equitable on paper; the Bank believes that behavioural responses and political economy factors sometimes make non‐viable the design changes of public systems recommended by the ILO and the ISSA; and the Bank places considerable emphasis on the benefits of risk diversification.