World Solve

Addressing pension systems that will break is critical for achieving the 2030 Agenda. Current efforts fall short in scale, speed and equity, leaving the most vulnerable behind. Any viable solution must function in low-resource settings with limited specialists, transport, laboratory capacity and broadband. Proposals should specify quantifiable biological, social or environmental outcomes, openly discuss potential risks, and present a realistic pathway for long-term maintenance and local ownership beyond short research pilots.

Addressing pension systems leaving older people poor is critical for achieving the 2030 Agenda. Current efforts fall short in scale, speed and equity, leaving the most vulnerable behind. Any viable solution must function in low-resource settings with limited specialists, transport, laboratory capacity and broadband. Proposals should specify quantifiable biological, social or environmental outcomes, openly discuss potential risks, and present a realistic pathway for long-term maintenance and local ownership beyond short research pilots.

Many countries will need to support more older people with fewer workers and uncertain productivity gains. The challenge is redesigning pensions, care, migration, housing, and employment without increasing generational conflict. The solution must work with limited capital, intermittent services, and local maintenance capacity. The research opportunity is to define measurable success criteria, test the approach in realistic settings, identify failure modes, and create a pathway from prototype to accountable deployment.

Pension and healthcare costs rise as the working-age population shrinks, forcing reforms in labour markets and social protection. Modelling tools and policy pilots for sustainable welfare redesign are needed.

Pension and healthcare costs rise as the working-age population shrinks, forcing reforms in labour markets and social protection. Modelling tools and policy pilots for sustainable welfare redesign are needed.

Informal workers and rural populations often have no access to unemployment insurance or pensions. Digital ID-linked social security schemes can extend coverage at lower administrative cost.

Most informal workers have no employer-based retirement savings, risking poverty in old age as populations age rapidly. Portable, mobile-based voluntary pension schemes could extend coverage to gig and informal workers.

Traditional family-based elder support is eroding as smaller family sizes and urban migration become the norm. Portable, government-backed pension expansion is urgently needed to prevent old-age poverty.

Over 80% of African employment is informal, meaning no pensions, health insurance, or job security for most workers. Digital tools to formalize informal businesses gradually could extend protections without heavy bureaucracy.

Over 80% of workers in countries like India, Bangladesh, and Nepal operate within informal economies without access to pensions, disability insurance, or minimum wage guarantees. Traditional bureaucratic tax and welfare systems fail to track or protect these transient and cash-reliant populations during economic shocks.

Migrant workers moving across regional trade corridors lose accrued pension contributions and social coverage when returning home, eroding long-term financial security.

Promises made to public workers decades ago about retirement benefits sometimes weren't matched with enough funding set aside to actually cover them. This leaves future governments facing financial strain that current officials often avoid addressing.

Fewer working-age people are supporting more retirees in many countries, straining pension systems built for a different population balance. Without reform, current retirement systems risk running out of money for future retirees.

The majority of informal-sector workers in Papua New Guinea have no access to pension savings mechanisms, leaving them financially vulnerable in old age.

Create sustainable community care, pensions, housing, health, mobility, and digital-access systems for countries aging before becoming high-income.