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10 Takeaways from the Jasper Roundtables Europe
Over the past three years, Jasper Forum has organized more than 30 online sessions, with over 1,000 global colleagues and friends. Our center-of-gravity has been global retirement finance, specifically workplace savings programs. But the improvisatory nature of Jasper always takes us in multiple directions. Jasper, as we say, isn’t the “conference” – it’s the coffee bar outside the conference.
In June 2024, we organized four Jasper Roundtable discussions in Paris, London, Copenhagen and Rotterdam – our first-ever live events. Here’s what we heard in Europe.
1. Global Aging
Global aging is second only to global climate change as a driver of systemic change. In Europe, increasing life expectancy and declining fertility are conspiring to collapse the “support ratio” – roughly the ratio of current workers to current retirees. This in turn places pressure on retirement systems, particularly publicly-funded pensions that have played such a critical role in Europe over recent generations.
This unalterable fact means that governments must not only contend with increased numbers of retirees, but deficits in the labor force. After years of “parametric adjustment” – raising retirement ages, altering inflation assumptions, increasing contribution rates – governments are looking for new solutions...
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