This edition of the Pension ReformPrimer examines the global trend in early retirement amongrich and poorer countries, the reasons for people retiringearly, the burden of early retirement on the pension system,recent policy initiatives to promote employment of olderworkers, and people's responses to incentives. Thepaper notes there is a clear relationship between earlyretirement and incentives in the pension system, a resultconfirmed by other international studies and by moredetailed econometric analysis of individual countries'systems. It finds that retirement depends on many otherfactors, such as individual health or the level ofunemployment. But financial incentives in the tax andpension system have important effects on the retirement deciosion.