Reveals how international institutions have played a seminal role in the development, diffusion, and implementation of new pension reforms that are transforming the postwar social contract in more than 30 countries worldwide, including the United States.

Mitchell Orenstein brings together leading economists and policy advisors to discuss the complex and timely issue of retirement and risk. Employers, increasingly called upon by elected officials, have begun to shift from a model of collective risk-sharing towards a model of individualized investment risk. This represents a marked difference from the notion of an American social safety net, which emerged during the Great Depression. Weighing what is gained and what is lost as new schemas surface, this book offers readers reasoned analysis of the looming crisis and our collective alternatives both domestically and abroad.

This book examines the origins and consequences of so-called pension fund capitalism, which has spread around the world since 1981, when the pension system was completely privatized in Chile. The author highlights the driving forces behind the privatization of pensions, its forms and tools used in practice, and the risks and costs related to private pensions. The reader can also learn about the experiences of various developed countries (including the USA, Canada, Australia, and Germany), as well as Latin American (including Chile) and Eastern European countries, related to the privatization of pensions. Particular attention is paid to Poland as an example of a country where such privatization failed completely. This book provides a source of serious reflection on what this privatization has led to, what its real economic and social consequences are and what the likelihood is of reversing it and strengthening the public pension system. Academic researchers and students of economics and finance, as well as social and political sciences, will find the book invaluable in understanding the problems arising from the privatization of pensions. It will also be of interest to professionals: institutions that shape or influence economic and social policy, including political parties, trade unions, non-governmental organizations, the media, and institutions operating on the financial market.

The need for pension reform is an increasingly important issue on the economic reform agenda of most European countries, although there has been considerable variation in the approaches adopted. This publication contains a selection of papers from leading scholars and practitioners in the fields of economics and political science, which seek to provide an insight into the process and progress of European pension reform and to highlight areas for further research.

This monograph provides coverage of British pensions policy-making. It includes an account of post-Beveridge pensions policy from 1942 to 1978, and describes the new philosophy of welfare and formulation and implementation of pensions policy in the 1980s.

By providing a balanced assessment and factual review of the praticalities and structure behind various pension schemes around the world, this book assists decision-makers in forming effective, viable pension policy.

Compact, timely, well-researched, and balanced, this institutional history of Social Security's seventy years shows how the past still influences ongoing reform debates, helping the reader both to understand and evaluate the current partisan arguments on both sides.

A comparison of the situation of older women and their pension outcomes in Britain and Hungary between 1945 and 1990. Using Ferge's concept of "societal policy", it is argued that the dependent status of older women is socially constructed. The role of patriarchy within welfare systems is explored.