The retirement compact that defined the post-war era is unravelling across advanced and middle-income economies alike. In the United States, a Vanguard estimate indicates that only 40 per cent of baby boomers aged 61 to 65 hold sufficient savings to maintain their lifestyles, even as 10,000 Americans reach retirement age each day. The gap between the $1.6 million that households believe they need and the median balances actually accumulated is forcing adult children to become de facto insurers for their parents, a dynamic Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff describes as intergenerational financial contagion. Viewed from Buenos Aires, the same pressure is reshaping Argentina’s financial culture, where the state pension’s declining replacement rate has turned long-dormant retirement insurance products into a necessity for professionals and middle-income workers.

The mechanism is structural. For decades, systems have migrated from defined-benefit pensions, where employers and the state pooled longevity risk, to defined-contribution schemes such as 401(k)s, IRAs and Australia’s superannuation funds, which place the burden of accumulation and decumulation on the individual. In Australia, Vanguard’s 2025 survey found that 54 per cent of working-age adults could not recall their last interaction with their super fund, and engagement is even lower among the young. Yet the same report shows that a 30-year-old earning A$100,000 who salary-sacrifices an extra A$50 per week can add nearly A$120,000 to their balance by age 65. The arithmetic is clear, but the behavioural gap persists. In Italy, INPS president Gabriele Fava stressed that the public pillar remains solid, but warned that workers must begin building complementary collective and individual provisions from their first contract, a message echoed by Iranian officials grappling with a system where contributions are often understated until the final two years of employment, creating a structural mismatch between inflows and pension promises.

The impact is cascading through households and policy chambers. In the US, the adult children of under-saved boomers face a dilemma: divert resources from their own retirement or watch parents slide into financial distress. In Iran, Ali Nasi-Aghdam, secretary of the social security organisation’s board of trustees, confirmed that parametric reforms are now unavoidable, targeting the perverse incentive to lowball wages for decades only to spike them in the final years of service. Argentina’s tax code already permits deductions for contributions to authorised retirement insurance, a nudge that financial advisers are promoting as the state’s capacity to guarantee income adequacy wanes. Meanwhile, on Canada’s Prince Edward Island, a decade-long cross-party consensus on a basic income guarantee has produced a scalable demonstration model, though the provincial government’s recent mandate letters omitted the project, risking the momentum built by anti-poverty advocates who frame the guarantee as a generational investment in dignity and productivity.

The next milestones are regulatory and political. In Iran, the social security administration is expected to table revised calculation formulas that would link benefits more closely to lifetime contributions. In Italy, INPS is expanding its digital platform to guide citizens from birth to survivor’s pension, with a new app already recording over 300 million accesses, 60 per cent from users under 34. And in Canada, campaigners are pressing Ottawa to co-finance the Prince Edward Island basic income trial, a decision that would signal whether the federal government is willing to treat income security as a shared national obligation rather than a residual provincial concern.