The Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey is conducted annually in cooperation with the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies®, Instituto de Longevidade Mongeral Aegon, and Cicero Group.
Respondents are interviewed using an online panel survey, and the interviews are conducted in their local languages in January/February of each year.
The interviews cover a wide range of issues such as attitudes toward retirement planning, the roles of government and employers in providing retirement benefits, and the impact of health in retirement and aging.
Countries
The survey includes a broad mix of industrial and industrializing countries. Many of these countries are working to build pension assets from a low base. For example, in China, pension fund assets, in 2012, represented just 0.9% of GDP compared with 160% in the Netherlands. The 15 countries in the 2016 study accounted for over 86% of the world's funded pension assets.
In 2016 the survey covered employees and retirees in 15 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. These countries were selected on the basis of their distinctive pension systems, as well as their varying demographic and aging trends.
Note on the effect of increasing the number of survey countries year-on-year
The first Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey, published in 2012, was based on research conducted in nine countries. A separate survey in Japan was conducted and reported on later that year. Therefore, 2012 is regarded as a 10-country study. In 2013, two new countries (Canada and China) were added bringing the universe to 12. In 2014, a further three countries (Brazil, India and Turkey) were added increasing the universe to 15. In 2015, the overall size of the survey was maintained at 15 countries although with the introduction of Australia and removal of Sweden. In 2018, the countries surveyed remained the same as 2017.
