Can you afford to retire? What we covered at ILERA 2026

11 September 2026

Can you afford to retire? Retirement, savings, and planning

Retirement is also about meeting basic needs. Take Marie, for example. Now aged 70, she has many years of steady work behind her. A decent salary. A paid-off home. She ran out of money after three years into retirement. As a freelance journalist, Lethabo always enjoyed the flexibility of his job. As retirement approaches, he can only use what he set aside. No employer had ever done this for him. Then, there’s Luis, who is still driving for a rideshare app at 65. He never joined a pension scheme. Now, extra shifts mean survival.

Retirement income: cost of living and uncertainty hit hard

More and more people worldwide are retiring later and living longer than previous generations.

While rising longevity reflects great achievements in public health, medicine, and living standards, it is also putting pension systems under pressure, when coupled with other factors such as lower birth rates and a shrinking workforce. Where pension systems are in place, retirement income may not suffice to cover daily expenses, leaving former workers without the financial resources to live on when they retire.

The situation can be even starker where pension systems are not in place. Self-employed workers, who make up 46% of the global workforce, face major retirement uncertainty. Since they are not automatically enrolled in any pension schemes, they must manage their own retirement savings, and unpredictable and irregular earnings make fixed monthly pension payments difficult to sustain. Others working in the informal economy, in temporary jobs or on zero-hour contracts have no coverage at all, forcing them to rely on family support or continue working.

Old-age income or old-age poverty?

Although more people are retiring later and living longer, a growing number of retirees are quietly realising that the maths no longer add up for them. According to OECD data, in 2025 the relative poverty rate for people over the age of 65 was:

• 40% in Korea.
• above 30% in Estonia, Latvia, and New Zealand.
• 20% or more in Australia, Costa Rica, Japan, Lithuania and the United States.
• In contrast, the lowest relative old-age poverty rates were found in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands and Norway, at 5% or below.

Relying on a pension that allows you to meet your basic needs is the first step towards a dignified old age.

We covered this topic, along with others, in our presentations at the 11th ILERA Asian Regional Congress 2026, jointly hosted in Tokyo by the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training and the Japan Industrial Relations Research Association.

The overarching theme was “Challenges for the New World of Work – How Should We Respond to New Technologies?”, and we approached it from different perspectives by presenting four research papers.

1.From Living Wage to Living Pension: how much income do you need in retirement?

Every year, a greater proportion of the world's population reaches retirement age and lives longer once they get there. A regular income in retirement, such as a pension, enables the elderly to purchase food and pay for housing or long-term care without having to keep working. But how much should this income be?

Authored by Paulien Osse, Martin Kahanec, Nii Ashia Amanquarnor, Daniela Ceccon, the paper “From Living Wage to Living Pension: A Framework for Measuring Retirement Affordability” presents a framework for measuring retirement affordability. As the global population is getting older, a shift in thinking is required. From the concept of Living Wage (How much income do I need to live decently?), we have developed the concept of Living Pension, which is the minimum income required for an individual at or beyond retirement age to meet basic needs. As there was no global benchmark, we created one and presented it at the 11th ILERA Congress in Tokyo.

Starting with the research question “How much of your working-life wage must you set aside for retirement?”, we delved deeper into what a Living Pension is, how it is calculated and how the landscape differs in 182 countries, as demonstrated by our analysis. Access the “From Living Wage to Living Pension” presentation.

Other papers: Living Wages, pay floors for the self-employed and AI

2. Living Wages and in-work poverty

A global Living Wage mission can help ensure that workers earn a sufficient wage for a decent standard of living of their households, as explained in our paper “Global Benchmarks for Decent Living: Measuring and Validating the Living Wage Against Minimum Wage and Other Adequacy Standards”, authored by Martin Kahanec, Martin Guzi, Nina Holičková, and Nii Ashia Amanquarnor. It addresses in-work poverty, a key target of Sustainable Development Goals and universal social rights principles.

Since 2013, we have provided a global harmonised methodology for Living Wage Calculation. At the ILERA Congress, we shared how we calculate Living Wage estimates for 190 countries, the impact of this methodology on actually providing material benefits in comparison to the Minimum Wage and adequate wage measurements, and ultimately its policy implications for this key message. Get more details about the Living Wage paper in the presentation.

3. Living Tariff: towards better protections for the self-employed

Millions of workers show up every day without an employer and without a pay floor to protect them. While in the Global North standard salaried jobs still dominate, 70% of employment in low-income countries is self-employment. These workers seek greater protection against legal ambiguity, inadequate social security and limited representation.

While a pay floor can help to provide better protection, new mechanisms that differ from consensus-based rates (such as statutory minimum wages and collective agreements) are needed.

WageIndicator has developed the Living Tariff, the “sister concept” of the Living Wage, for those outside standard employment. The Living Tariff is the amount that self-employed or gig workers need to earn to cover not only the daily living expenses, but also work equipment costs, overhead costs, taxes, social security, and savings in case of illness and retirement. What are the pillars behind this concept, and what does the data show? We covered this topic in the paper titled “Pay setting outside standard employment: Conceptualising the Living Tariff (Authors: Paulien Osse, Marta Kahancová, Martijn Arets), and presented it at the ILERA Congress. How we presented the Living Tariff at the ILERA Congress.

4. AI and collective agreements: fast track or slow lane?

“AI, algorithmic management and collective bargaining in European services: Fast track or slow lane?” Authored by Fiona Dragstra, Daryn Zholdasbay, Marta Kahancova and Gabriele Medas, this paper was built on the following research question: how are collective bargaining processes and outcomes across Europe adapting to the rise of algorithmic management? Scholarly and policy debates highlight risks of work intensification, erosion of worker autonomy, and lack of transparency. However, little is known about whether and how existing bargaining institutions address algorithmic control.

Thanks to three data sources (desk research of the regulatory landscape, a survey conducted by UNI Europa in 32 countries, and the analysis of 108 collective agreements), we were able to share insights into how collective bargaining responds to algorithmic management (AM), and its distinct difference with AI. For example:

• The number of European unions bargaining increased by 23% in two years.
• Collective agreements containing AI-related provisions nearly doubled.
• However, negotiations on AM lack beyond even though these drastically impact workers’ lives already.

Want the full picture? See the full presentation about AI, algorithmic management and collective bargaining in European services