The IIASA World Population Program has received a new grant from the European Research Council to explore how to make pension policies more equitable by identifying fair normal pension ages and ensuring new measures of population ageing are up-to-date.
The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded the IIASA World Population Program a 2020 Proof of Concept grant to develop the groundbreaking research done as part of the ReAging project that produced new measures of population ageing appropriate for 21st century conditions. IIASA is the only Austrian-based research institute to be awarded a grant in this round.
Changes in national life expectancies and age structures require changes in policies; a particularly important area that requires adaptation is national pension policy. Recent changes in pension policies in some developed economies have been driven by financial considerations and have caused considerable dissent as they have been seen to place the burden of reform inequitably.
The new research plans to use Austria and Russia as case studies to develop tools that provide policymakers with fair normal pension ages and consistently up-to-date measures of population ageing that consider the changing characteristics of populations.
“With this new research we present an innovative methodology that produces scenarios of equitable normal pension ages using the details of a specific pension system. This project shows how fairness can enter public policy discussions of ageing,” says project leader Sergei Scherbov.
Research partner: European Research Council
News
20 July 2026
Smarter mobility infrastructure for a lower-carbon future
As populations grow and economies develop, the world will need more roads, railways, and other mobility infrastructure, especially in rapidly urbanizing regions. The challenge is to provide that infrastructure while minimizing resource use and carbon emissions – a goal new research suggests is well within reach.
17 July 2026
Connecting the dots behind Southeast Asia's catastrophic fires
How do wildfires grow into catastrophic events? By tracing the earliest detectable origins of the devastating 2015 equatorial Southeast Asian fires, researchers found that most large fires had multiple origin points and identified the ecological, climatic, and human factors associated with where fires begin. These findings provide new insights that could help improve fire prevention and understanding of fire risks under climate change across tropical landscapes.
15 July 2026
Shift to healthy, sustainable diets would reshape global agriculture
IIASA researchers contributed to a new international study showing that a combination of healthier diets, improved farm productivity, and reduced food waste could fundamentally reshape global agriculture, substantially reducing pressure on land and greenhouse gas emissions while delivering significant benefits for human health and the environment.