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The chapter discusses three periods of policy change in the field of pension policy. It explains basic parameters of public pension systems and the scope of private provision, comparing contemporary systems with those which existed in the late 1970s. Using a number of indicators, it assess the scale and profile of change in each country. The different reform profiles are identified and their genesis discussed in the context of major legislative changes. It argues that the impact of policy legacies have played a major role in shaping policy profiles. The notion of ‘path dependence’ is a more instructive concept in pension than in unemployment or family policy, rendering radical policy change less likely in Germany than in the UK. However, changes in contextual conditions, not least due to German unification, have contributed to programmatic re-orientations and power relations within major political parties.

This comparative chapter by Ebbinghaus and Neugschwender discusses the institutional differences in the public–private mix, distinguishing mature from emerging multipillar systems and hybrid from dominantly public pension systems. It focuses on exploring the interaction between income inequalities in working life and pension system features for old age income. In particular, it considers the first tier of minimum income support, the public and private second-tier earnings-related pensions, and the particularities of private pensions. The empirical analysis compares poverty rates over time and across countries, discussing the impact of public pensions. The further analysis reveals variations in the recipient rate and income share of private supplementary pensions among the elderly. The importance of mandatory or negotiated occupational pensions in order to reduce inequality in multipillar pension systems is evident in addition to the role of public minimum income protection for poverty reduction.

This chapter by Ebbinghaus and Gronwald provides a comparative historical analysis mapping the cross-national institutional diversity in the evolution of pension systems in ten European countries. Analysing the long-term development, it describes the way in which institutional arrangements in private pensions evolved over time and interact with public pension reforms. The process of institutional change is examined by analysing critical junctures in the public–private pension mix. First, the early legacy and path-dependent post-war dynamics in public pension development are sketched, contrasting Bismarckian social insurance and Beveridge basic pension traditions. The second juncture compares successful versus belated or even failed expansion of public pensions to secure living standards in old age, and its consequences for crowding out private pensions. Finally, the more recent pension reforms led towards a multipillar pension system, in some cases retrenchment of public pensions and privatization efforts are crowding in funded private pensions.

This chapter discusses the situations of twelve major countries that are members of the OECD — the USA, the UK, Germany, Japan, Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Australia, France, and Italy — and compares the fundamental features of their private pension funds as well as considering how these are related to social security. It attempts to examine the key reasons that would explain why the development of private pensions in these countries is at different levels while providing policy-makers with possible alternatives to impose such developments in their own countries. It also examines pension funds' relative sizes, the factors that bring about the said differences, the details regarding the structure of retirement-income pension, the contribution of pension funds, and some of the measures for reform.

This chapter explores pension reform in Germany. It begins with a brief overview of the institutional structure of the system of old age protection. Recent pension debates are discussed, and the major elements and effects of the 2001 pension reform are analysed. Pension reform has created a trend towards reducing the benefit level in social insurance. The issue of making private pensions mandatory is expected to be included in the political agenda.

Conventionally, pension funds are perceived as a part of a system for providing income to those of old age in which the other components include earnings-related social security, either provided to those without a pension or compulsory, compulsory flat rate social-security pensions, work after retirement, support from the family, and individual saving that also encompasses the purchase of residential property as well as life-insurance-based savings plans. Social security thus proves to be one of the fundamental factors in the framework of retirement-income provision and in private pensions' further development. As the chapter addresses the need to provide an account regarding the key issues in social security, it looks into some of the basic concepts, such as how the public provision of pensions is justified, social security's economic implications, public schemes, and the various manifestations of social-security pensions.

Following the Bismarckian social insurance tradition, the post-war pension system of France has been characterized by occupational fragmentation, its strong reliance on pay-as-you-go financing, and by the direct involvement of employers and trade unions in their management. Generous benefits offered a combination of statutory public pension and mandatory occupational pensions, initially crowding out any funded private pensions. However, pension reforms that promoted retrenchment both in the two pay-as-you-go-financed statutory public and occupational pension schemes since the 1990s have resulted in the gradual development of funded private pensions. In recent years, the governance of mandatory occupational schemes has been harmonized and inequalities between different occupational categories have been reduced. While the regulatory framework governing voluntarily funded plans (both occupational and personal pensions) has been largely unified, access to these schemes remains mostly limited to high-skilled employees.

This chapter sets out the wide range of options for pension design – funded or Pay‐As‐You‐Go, public or private, defined‐contribution or defined‐benefit – drawing on economic theory, the experience of different countries, and analysis of public and private institutional capacity constraints. Though the options vary in the form and extent of state involvement, even the most private arrangements require continuing government involvement, notably to ensure macroeconomic stability, to enforce contributions, and to ensure regulation of financial markets; and if reducing uncertainty is an objective – addressing inflation, pooling risks within a generation and across generations – the role of the state is to that extent larger.

This chapter examines the resilience of the two key components of the Canadian retirement income system: the Old Age Security (OAS) program and the compulsory, pay-as-you-go earnings-related scheme. The public pension scheme has both an unfunded component and a funded element, the CPP Investment Fund. The latter was adopted as a measure to improve public pension retirement security. The public system also embodies a balance between poverty reduction (the OAS program) and retirement income support (Q/CPP). The private pension system is generally considered the funded component of Canada's retirement system. It has proved successful in providing income replacement, particularly for those with higher incomes, who receive lower replacement rates from the OAS program due to the progressive nature of the public pension system.

There are two very different types of proposals for private pension system change that have been put before Congress. The first type of change can be seen in the Pension Preservation and Savings Expansion Act (PPSEA), introduced in 2003 by Portman and Cardin. PPSEA is a ‘traditional’ type of pension reform, an omnibus bill that tinkers with almost every aspect of the private pension system to make incremental changes. The second type of proposal can be seen in the attempt of the Administration to effect radical change and simplification in the structure of the private pension system. The 2003 proposal, modified in budget submissions in 2004, contemplated a sweeping consolidation in the number and types of defined contribution (DC) plans. This chapter evaluates these two approaches to change; the first one for incremental change, and the second one involving greater structural reform; and then it considers an alternative.

This chapter focuses on the lessons private industry could learn from state and local government pensions, It begins with a brief history of public pensions. It then compares public and private pensions, and discusses benefits to employees and public defined benefit plans as financial engines. It is argued that public pension plans are in a strong position to handle the coming influx of retirees, since, unlike Social Security (mainly a pay-as-you-go program); public pensions are rather well-funded (approximately 95 percent in 2003).

Like France and Italy, Germany will be severely affected by an ageing population and the underfunding of social insurance and related retirement benefits. While there is considerable pride in Otto von Bismarck's model of social solidarity and insurance, there is widespread debate about the proper response to the demographic crisis, including continuing conflict over the role and status of private pension privatisation. This chapter examines how and why financial transparency and comparability have become so significant, and the implications of such accountability for management power and private pension systems. The convergence of the United States, international, and European accounting standards is discussed, with emphasis on the underlying assumptions made by accounting professionals about the efficiency of global finance. The patterns of German corporate pension accounting in the DAX 30 index and non-DAX 30 companies are considered, along with pension liability and corporate finance, Germany's adoption of international accounting standards, corporate pension liabilities, and management discretion and retirement plans.

This chapter discusses the reconfiguration of corporate decision-making in Germany, focusing on employer-sponsored pensions, their management, and their investment protocols given the Anglo-American practice and international accounting standards. The process of convergence between the Anglo-American and German management practices is conditioned by the changing interests and loyalties of managers in relation to workers and shareholders and the introduction of new German private pension institutions that may ‘map on’ to the Anglo-American institutions and practices in ways not previously anticipated. This chapter also reviews the various modes of corporate retirement income provision in Germany, social insurance and supplementary pensions, global finance and global learning, management motives and the social market, the German corporate structure and governance, economic agents as stakeholders, corporate governance and control, models of investment management, and the role and status of ‘unfunded’ book reserve and ‘underfunded’ mutual insurance pension systems in the context of German labour-management relations and co-determination.

Shows that there are important correlations between the unions' strength and activities and their welfare outcomes. The chapter provides a taxonomy of the large differences across countries in unions' strength and social expenditure. The analysis distinguishes among four dimensions of union influence: (1) unions as political movements; (2) unions and self‐administration in public schemes; (3) unions and private pensions; and (4) institutional participation and political veto points.

While several economic issues are brought about by the various developments of pension funds, it is important to consider that issues similar to these also emerge for least developed countries (LDCs). Thus, traditional methods for providing the elderly with care are disintegrating because of the rapidly ageing population, industrialization, and ill-conceived social-security systems. The successful development of private pension schemes entails a prior level of development in the financial sector, the absence of political interference, the availability of skilled employees and the economy's administrative efficiency. Private pensions would often require free-market orientation as well as capital markets and administrative development that would further regulation. This chapter attempts to examine the social security issues in LDCs and the development of the securities markets.

This chapter reviews the place of private pensions in the overall retirement income picture, recent trends in private pension coverage, and the adequacy of private pensions in helping to meet the retirement needs of vulnerable populations. The last issue is of special importance to geriatric social workers, who must be aware of and knowledgeable about the income adequacy and security challenges that their clients are facing.

This chapter uses policy simulation to illustrate the scale and nature of the institutional changes made to the German and British pension systems by reforms undertaken in the first decade of the new century. The projected outcomes of the new systems for a range of hypothetical biographies in both countries are compared with those of the systems they replaced. The chapter argues that the results of these simulations are consistent neither with the predictions of the globalization thesis nor regime theory. There is no evidence of institutional convergence on the basis of a ‘race to the bottom’, but neither have the two systems remained constrained by regime logic. In fact, Britain’s reform is strongly social democratic in orientation, with Germany’s strongly liberal. In the short term these developments might generate some convergence of pension levels as German citizens spend more of their working life under the new, less generous state system while Britain’s gradually gain the benefits of recent reforms. However, when analysis focuses purely on the nature of current public/private pension institutions as revealed by their projected outcomes, the German system is shown to be more consistent with an ideal typical liberal regime than Britain’s.

This chapter summarises the major findings of the book regarding the tensions between the European pension systems and global finance. First, the European nation-state is an increasingly fragile entity, undercut by the reemerging crosscurrents of internal diversity, identity politics, and regionalism. At issue is the locus of social solidarity. Second, the ideal of a national fiscal sovereignty sounds increasingly hollow. Third, demographic trends in Europe are viewed by many as alarming with respect to the financial integrity of the nation-state pay-as-you-go social security systems. Other findings: Germany's Riester-style tax-preferred private pension arrangements open the way for greater decentralisation in retirement income planning, but national social insurance will remain a core component of retirement income; if access to the global financial markets is one solution to demographic ageing and pension funding crisis, London clearly looms large as a vital player in those markets.

This chapter looks at pension choices and analyses class and gender inequalities in the ability to contribute to the expanding range of types of private pension. It uses data from the General Household Survey. The chapter then studies the characteristics of employees who have chosen personal pensions and those who remained in the state pension scheme. It distinguishes those with access to an occupational pension and those without an occupational pension, while considering the implications for later-life income.