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Increasing longevity and lower birth rates put pressure on the sustainability of pension systems. This compels countries to reform pension schemes. Different countries opt for different types of reforms. This article examines the scope of possibilities for a pension reform in two countries with distinct institutional and ideational setup: Finland and France.

The authors utilise the framework of different modes of justification presented by Boltanski and Thévenot to reveal the reasoning used in pension reform discussions in both countries. The authors study expert reports to analyse how nationally constructed ideas and local institutions frame and shape the different logics and justifications.

In Finland, the approach to pensions is dominated by industrial and market justifications. The pension system is institutionally separated into two different blocks: one addressing poverty and the other income maintenance. The separation enables the prevalence of these logics and makes it easier to promote reforms that emphasize efficiency and individual responsibility instead of income distribution. The French report is concentrated around civic and domestic dominated justifications by stressing solidarity and the role of pension systems connecting individuals and generations together. Any reform needs to consider these issues.

The article uses a novel research design to study pension reform processes. The article distinguishes the roles that ideas and institutions have in shaping expert reasoning and reform options. The authors show how ideas and institutions form a mutually reinforcing loop which helps to explain path-dependency in pension systems.

The comment addresses the idea of substituting professional elder care with informal care provided by early retirees to save economic costs.

The comment arose from reading “How to handle gerontocracy”, scientific research and critical, analytical thinking.

While having early pensioners deliver elderly care has positive implications, substituting professional with informal care must be challenged. First, the “unused reservoir” of early pensioners might be overestimated, as they often already have care responsibilities. Second, the substitution of professional services is already happening due to staff shortages. Third, untrained caregivers might struggle to provide the needed care quality, resulting in worse health outcomes (and higher follow-up costs). Finally, there are concerns of social sustainability: because of role expectations, mainly women may take on care tasks, reinforcing social inequality. Also, the third sector might lose hours of volunteer work.

The comment appeals to a critically rethinking of the idea of substituting professional services with informal care provision and argues for differentiated and well-tailored policy measures, taking into account the complex nature of (informal) caregiving.

Background: Rising food bank usage in the UK suggests a growing prevalence of food insecurity. However, a formalised, representative measure of food insecurity was not collected in the UK until 2019, over a decade after the initial proliferation of food bank demand. In the absence of a direct measure of food insecurity, this article identifies and summarises longitudinal proxy indicators of UK food insecurity to gain insight into the growth of insecure access to food in the 21st century.

Methods: A rapid evidence synthesis of academic and grey literature (2005–present) identified candidate proxy longitudinal markers of food insecurity. These were assessed to gain insight into the prevalence of, or conditions associated with, food insecurity.

Results: Food bank data clearly demonstrates increased food insecurity. However, this data reflects an unrepresentative, fractional proportion of the food insecure population without accounting for mild/moderate insecurity, or those in need not accessing provision. Economic indicators demonstrate that a period of poor overall UK growth since 2005 has disproportionately impacted the poorest households, likely increasing vulnerability and incidence of food insecurity. This vulnerability has been exacerbated by welfare reform for some households. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically intensified vulnerabilities and food insecurity. Diet-related health outcomes suggest a reduction in diet quantity/quality. The causes of diet-related disease are complex and diverse; however, evidence of socio-economic inequalities in their incidence suggests poverty, and by extension, food insecurity, as key determinants.

Conclusion: Proxy measures of food insecurity suggest a significant increase since 2005, particularly for severe food insecurity. Proxy measures are inadequate to robustly assess the prevalence of food insecurity in the UK. Failure to collect standardised, representative data at the point at which food bank usage increased significantly impairs attempts to determine the full prevalence of food insecurity, understand the causes, and identify those most at risk.

This paper evaluates the risk-adjusted returns, selectivity, market timing skills and persistence of the performance of Nigerian pension funds.

Annual return data of 23 pension funds that operated in Nigeria between 2018 and 2022 were obtained from the National Pension Commission (PenCom). Risk-adjusted return was appraised using the Treynor ratio, Sharpe ratio and Jensen alpha, while the Treynor–Mazuy and Henriksson–Merton multiple regression models were applied to decompose selective and timing skills. Performance persistence was assessed using the contingency table and rank correlation models.

Evidence shows that pension funds deliver excess risk-adjusted returns and exhibit selective skills. However, the evidence does not support the presence of timing skills, and there is overwhelming evidence that good (bad) performance does not repeat.

An evaluation of the investment performance of pension funds is crucial for ensuring the financial stability of retirees, maintaining economic stability and making informed investment decisions. It serves the interests of pensioners, pension fund managers, regulators and the broader economy. Our evidence that pension funds generate positive excess returns is a departure from most of the literature on managed funds. We recommend that more Nigerians should leverage the pension fund industry to grow their wealth and prepare for retirement.

This study, to our knowledge, is the first to appraise all the key facets of the investment performance of pension funds in the Nigerian context.

Due to government policies, accreditation demands, competition, digital India reforms and National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the need for electronic human resource management (e-HRM) has increased considerably in the Indian higher education (HE) sector, but the literature has revealed that the adoption of e-HRM practices in Indian HE institutions (HEIs) is still in its embryonic stage; therefore, the purpose of the current qualitative study is to explore the challenges and facilitators of e-HRM adoption in the Indian HE sector through interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).

The present study incorporates IPA, to capture the personal lived experiences of the HR executives employed in the Indian HEIs. Using purposive sampling, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the HR executives employed in Indian universities and institutions to know the perspectives on the adoption of e-HRM practices in Indian HEIs.

The study identified two superordinate themes, namely, challenges and facilitators of e-HRM adoption in the Indian HE sector. The superordinate theme “challenges” comprises eight sub-themes. Further, the theme “facilitators” consists of six subthemes.

The study has implications for the stakeholders of the HE sector, i.e. HR practitioners, top executives of the HE sector, government and HE regulators and other stakeholders of the HE sector.

This study has given deep insights into the challenges and facilitators in the adoption of e-HRM practices in the Indian HE sector, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study till date has filled this knowledge gap through qualitative exploration using IPA.

Retiring from work used to signify the end of paid employment and a transition to focus on life outside the workplace. From this perspective, the work-life interface may have no relevance for the retired. However, recent changes, particularly resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, suggest that conceptualizations of both retirement and the work-life interface are more fluid, ambiguous, and complex. In this chapter, we first set the scene, reviewing how and why the traditional concept of retirement has changed so dramatically. Drawing on empirical data from contemporary media, we then consider how the current experience of the older worker and retiree are being reframed in neoliberal terms, emphasizing individual responsibility to remain not just fit and healthy but also productive, through a wide range of activities. We then focus on the impact of COVID-19, highlighting how pre-pandemic structural inequalities have been exacerbated, resulting in a range of responses in both levels of retirement and work by older people. We conclude by suggesting that retirement and its work-life interface need to recognize lived experience as dynamic, messy, and varied and implicated in wider structural features of both the economy and society.

The purpose of the article is to introduce the outcomes of a study analyzing the relationships between willingness to use technology for health purposes, health information behavior (HIB), health behavior (HB) choices, readiness for COVID-19 vaccination, socioeconomic indicators and self-reported health among older adults aged = 50 years living in Estonia.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 501 people aged = 50 in Estonia in 2020, a month after the end of lockdown.

The results of the study indicate that the more recurrent the need for HI was (rho = 0.11, p < 0.05) and the more regularly one searched for it (rho = 0.14, p < 0.01), the more willing a person was to get vaccinated. Also, interest in digital applications corresponded to vaccination readiness (rho = 0.25, p < 0.001). However, this relationship did not emerge in the case of other HBs such as healthy eating and exercise. Differences in HIB should be taken into account when developing effective means of health communication designed especially for crisis situations.

Estonia is known as one of the digital front runners in the world. However, social welfare and the well-being of disadvantaged groups among the population (e.g. older people) have not yet caught up with the more developed Western countries. Thus, learning more about the health-related information behavior of older adults, e.g. the kind of health information they are seeking and using in Estonia, allows policymakers, health information providers and libraries in Estonia to plan and carry out more effective interventions and help them to improve the existing systems so as to furnish older adults with relevant information.

Adopting a welfare stance, this paper considers whether the neoliberalist approach which has been adopted by successive UK and Scottish governments will achieve optimal societal outcomes or lead to the under provision of senior housing.

Data collection centred on informed multi-stakeholder groups that have significant experience working in the retirement and senior housing sector. Core techniques included desk-based study of secondary academic, consultancy and policy documents. Primary data collection techniques involved primary participation of three Scottish taskforce meetings and interviews with key stakeholders from across the sector.

The paper concludes that without direct government intervention in the market, the welfare ambition to provide adequate housing for an ageing population will not materialise with significant shortfalls in appropriate stock predicted. To prevent this scenario developing, increased public and private sector interaction is essential.

The research follows the growing concern to provide research that has “real world” relevance. The paper conducts a detailed analysis of the Scottish government's housing strategy and reports on the findings of interviewees with key stakeholders. The paper makes recommendations for greater public/private partnerships.