Retirement Savings in Australia, Asia and Beyond: What are the Lessons for the United States?
Past Event
Retirement Savings in Australia, Asia and Beyond: What are the Lessons for the United States?
Australia’s mandatory Superannuation Guarantee requires its citizens to save at least 9 percent of their income towards retirement. In many Asian nations, economic growth has spurred reexamination of pension systems to meet the needs of rapidly evolving societies. Would a mandatory savings plan be more effective than the current U.S. voluntary system? How have Asian nations have restructured their pension systems to deal with legacy costs? And what can Americans learn from the way Australia uses both employer and employee representatives to shape investment choices?
On September 17, the Retirement Security Project at Brookings and the AARP Public Policy Institute hosted a discussion of what the United States might learn from retirement savings systems in Australia and Asia. Opening speakers included Nick Sherry, who helped shape the Australian system as a cabinet minister and ran a Superannuation fund in the private sector, and Josef Pilger, an advisor on pension reform to both the Malaysian and Hong Kong governments and many industry providers. Steve Utkus, David Harris and Benjamin Harris, retirement experts from both the United States and the United Kingdom, considered how reforms in Australia and Asia can shape the American debate and whether this country should adopt key features from those foreign systems.
Agenda
Introduction and Overview
William G. Gale
The Arjay and Frances Fearing Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy
Senior Fellow - Economic Studies
Director - Retirement Security Project
Co-Director - Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center
David C. John
Deputy Director - Retirement Security Project
Nonresident Senior Fellow - Economic Studies
Senior Policy Advisor, AARP Public Policy Institute
Pension Reform in Australia
Nick Sherry
former Australian Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law
Pension Reform in Asia
Josef Pilger
Executive Director, Asia Pacific Pension Practice Leader - Ernst & Young Sydney
Response
Steve Utkus
Principal - Vanguard Center for Retirement Research
David Harris
Managing Director - Tor Financial Consulting, Ltd.
Benjamin H. Harris
Former Brookings Expert
Executive Director of the Kellogg Public-Private Interface - Kellogg School of Management
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