For the 13th year, Natixis Investment Managers and CoreData Research have developed a global retirement index to examine factors that drive retirement security and to provide a comparison tool for best practices in retirement policy.
The index includes International Monetary Fund advanced economies, members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China).
The index is a composite welfare index that combines 18 target-oriented indicators, grouped into four thematic sub-indexes that cover relevant considerations for welfare in old age: health, quality of life, material well-being and finances in retirement. Researchers calculated a score in each category from 0% to 100%, and combined the category scores for a final overall ranking of the 44 nations studied.
The U.S. inched up one spot in the GRI rankings to 21st best country for retirees. Strengthening financial conditions and longer life expectancy helped offset the effects of a cooling labor market and a decline in happiness scores.
At the same time, optimism among Americans is on the rise: just 21% now say it will take a “miracle” to retire. Still, 69% believe the world feels unstable and worry about the impact on their finances.
“This year’s Global Retirement Index paints a complex and cautious picture regarding people’s anxiousness about a comfortable retirement,” Dave Goodsell, executive director of the Natixis Center for Investor Insight, said in a statement. “Only four years ago, in 2021, 41% of Americans told us, it would ‘take a miracle’ to retire securely, yet this year, we’ve learned that almost half that number (21%) of Americans share that view.”
Nonetheless, Goodsell said, American retirement savers remain worried about inflation’s effect on savings, public debt and Social Security benefits, and have lingering uncertainty whether their retirement funds have enough savings to fund longer than expected retirements.
Here’s how the U.S. performed in the four thematic subindexes:
— Finances in retirement: up five places to 10
— Health: up three spots to 24
— Material well-being: remained at 24
— Quality of life: dropped two places to 25
See the 15 countries that provide the best retirement security, according to the Global Retirement Index.
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