Safety Nets

From the press release:

Norway is the world’s best place to be a mother, and eight of the 10 top-ranked countries are in Western Europe. The remaining two are in the southern hemisphere, with Australia ranking second and New Zealand eighth. This year, the United States ranks 31st of 43 developed countries, dropping three spots from last year’s rankings.

Meanwhile, eight of the world’s 10 worst countries to be a mother are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The world’s toughest place to be a mother is Afghanistan, where two of every five children are malnourished and one in five will die before their fifth birthday. Afghan women have less than five years of schooling on average, and female life expectancy is only 45. Compare that to Norway, where one in 333 children die before age five and women typically complete 18 years of school and live to age 83.

From PR Newswire Press Release:

Nearly eight in ten (78 percent) women say they lack financial savvy (or they are still learning) about retirement planning. Given this, more than one in three married women admit they hand over the reins for their retirement planning to their spouse or significant other. Still a quarter of women (23 percent) acknowledge that they should pay more attention to retirement planning.

To help determine why some women lack readiness in their retirement planning, the survey revealed that: 

• Nearly 30 percent have no idea what their main source of retirement income will be.
• 40 percent of women don't know what kind of retirement lifestyle they want.
• 49 percent wish they knew more about the basics of investing, including picking the right stocks or funds, and portfolio and risk management.
• 37 percent of women blame a lack of time, complicated Wall Street jargon and trouble with their everyday expenses as hurdles that prevent them from being investing savvy.