Asia's pension schemes suffered from the worst of all worlds, the report said, being “unlikely to be sustainable as populations age” as many “Asia/Pacific countries also face a problem of adequacy of retirement incomes”.
“There is now a narrow window for many Asian countries to avoid future pension problems and repeating many of the mistakes made in Europe and North America. But it will soon be too late,” the report concludes.
Although pension systems across Asia were diverse, the region was “ill-prepared for the rapid population ageing that will occur over the next two decades”, a process that would be more painful than that in the west where the transition to an older society had taken a century.