In particular: •  The steep increase in the old-age dependency ratio observed in many countries has brought a retrenchment in public pensions and a switch to supplementary schemes. These structural changes in pension schemes in turn affect the financial choices of households and have far-reaching effects on financial markets at large.
•  In order to secure retirement income, households have significantly increased the portion of their financial assets managed by institutional investors, such as pension funds, mutual funds and insurance companies: in the three largest economies of the euro area, in the last decade this share increased on average by 10 percentage points to more than a third.