Ageing and Pension Reform Around the World: Evidence from Eleven Countries

A dozen papers from a March 2003 conference in Sapporo, Japan examine the aging of the population and its impact on old-age pensions in European, Asian, and North American countries, thus providing a comparative study of whether or not the demographic transition is affecting all countries in similar ways, whether it generates different pension politics in different countries, and if pension systems are reacting similarly or differently to the common challenge. Each country chapter first describes the emergence of an aging-related pension, then follows the sequence of events through which most pension reform processed go. Differences between countries are attributed to variations in the pattern of population aging and in the institutional structure of pension systems. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)