Ageing and Social Security: A crisis or a new consensus?

Most of the world's industrialised nations and an increasing number of developing countries are in the midst of a public, and often acrimonious, debate about whether governments will be able to provide adequate health and income security to the growing number of their older citizens. This debate has been in full swing for well over a decade and during this period many countries have taken steps to adjust their social security systems to the significant increases in the number of older persons expected to rely on social security protection.

What have we learned from this decade-long debate and the series of national social security reforms? Are governments shifting the responsibility for caring for an older population to the private sector and to individuals? Is a new social contract being written at the beginning of the 21st century? What are the implications for the vast majority, estimated to be about 80%, of the world's population, which remains outside formal systems of social security protection? Is there behind the clash of the political debate about the future of social security protection a search for a new consensus on how to prepare and adjust to an ageing world?