Retirement System Reform | Simplicity New Zealand

Aotearoa New Zealand built its retirement system for a radically different demographic world.

In the 1970s, there were seven working-age New Zealanders for every person over 65. Today there are just four; by the 2070s, Treasury projects there will be just two. By 2006, we were already entering a permanent structural demographic shift that has contributed to a period of widening inequality, with fiscal pressures of an ageing population set to intensify over the decades ahead.

New Zealanders are now deep inside that transition, which is being financed predominantly through taxes on current workers, who are at the same time facing greater public-service rationing and growing concentrations of wealth among those who already own housing and other assets. Many younger and lower-income New Zealanders are being systematically shut out of asset ownership and long-term economic security.

We have advocated for KiwiSaver 2.0 as part of the economic plumbing for a well common-world. We want universal child accounts, compulsory employer contributions, full inclusion of self-employed people, and far stronger support for those whose ability to build assets is interrupted by care, low incomes or hardship, alongside reforms that address wealth concentration at the top, including the taxation of housing gains and intergenerational transfers. We also want public policy settings that support some of the assets pooled through KiwiSaver into viable housing and infrastructure projects that build more economically inclusive cities.