What should MENA Pension Systems look like for the next 50 years?

• It has been around 50 years since social insurance and pension systems were first introduced into the various countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The region has thrived in the first 50 years of pensions, which we can now dub “the golden years of pensions”. This was possible despite the unexpected volatile economic and labor-market conditions, and the limited single-pillar structure of social insurance through Defined Benefit (DB) pension that exists till this day. In the GCC, a strong oil-economy and a fund lifecycle where asset accumulation grew much faster than the number of retiring workers in the first 40 years, kept pension funds highly solvent and fully able to keep their promises to retirees with a golden handshake.
• With aging populations challenging the very model upon which pensions have been built, with the majority of populations in several MENA countries working in informal sector, with millions of youths being nudged to work in the new gig-economy, with more than half of the workforce in the GCC being expat workers, and with most regional pension funds running chronic actuarial deficits, how should we design the MENA pensions systems for the next 50 years? How do we want our children and their children to retire one or two generations from today?
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