Swedish people’s confidence in the country's pension system is on the increase, according to a survey by Novus for the pension company Skandia.

The research found that 32 per cent of people in Sweden had fairly high or very high confidence in the system in 2022.

This represents an 11 percentage point increase on 2018, when 21 per cent of Swedes said they had confidence in the pension system.

Respondents who save actively and regularly for their pension had greater than average confidence in the system, with 35 per cent of people in this cohort displaying confidence.

Furthermore, the proportion of respondents with low confidence in the system has fallen by 3 percentage points since 2020.

Skandia noted that, for the first time in decades, pensions had emerged as an important election issue ahead of voting in the autumn.

“The figures show that there is a bias between politicians' eagerness to raise pensions and the Swedish people's confidence in the issue,” commented Skandia pension economist, Mattias Munter.

“The Swedish people are becoming more and more satisfied with pensions and the pension system, and confidence is steadily increasing.

“Politicians have a very clear focus on today's pensioners. But there is an inherent challenge in focusing on short-term proposals.

“We have a system that is designed to last until the next ice age, but the current proposals risk becoming a real heat wave.

“Both today's and tomorrow's pensioners benefit from the long-term with stable rules of the game - where short-termism instead risks challenging both confidence and the state's finances in the long run.”

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