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To what extent do international organizations, global policy networks, and transnational policy entrepreneurs influence domestic policy makers? Have we entered a new phase of globalization that, unbeknownst to most citizens, shapes policies that used to be the sole domain of domestic politics?Privatizing Pensionsreveals how international institutions--such as the World Bank, USAID, and other transnational policy actors--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 thirty countries worldwide, including the United States. Mitchell Orenstein shows how transnational actors have driven change in a policy area once thought to be beyond reform in many countries, and how they have done so by deploying their unique resources and legitimacy to promote new ideas, recruit disciples worldwide, and provide a broad range of technical assistance to government reformers over the long term. He demonstrates that while domestic decision makers may retain veto power over these reforms--which replace traditional social security with individual pension savings accounts--transnational policy makers play the role of \"proposal actors,\" shaping the information, preferences, and resources of their domestic clients. Privatizing Pensionsargues that even the most quintessentially domestic areas of policy have been thoroughly globalized, and that these international influences must be better understood.

A crisis is looming for baby boomers and anyone else who hopes to retire in the coming years. In When I'm Sixty-Four, Teresa Ghilarducci, the nation's leading authority on the economics of retirement, explains how to confront this crisis head-on, revealing the causes behind the increasingly precarious economics of old age in America and proposing a bold plan to guarantee retirement security for every working citizen. Retirement is one of the hallmarks of a prosperous, civilized market economy. Yet in America today Social Security is on the ropes. Government and employers are dismantling pension security, forcing older people to work longer. The federal government spends billions in exemptions for 401(k)s and other voluntary retirement accounts, yet retirement savings for most workers is falling. Ghilarducci takes an unflinching look at the eroding economic structure of retirement in America--and what she finds is alarming. She exposes the failures of pension regulators and the false hopes of privatized Social Security. She tells the ugly truth about risky 401(k) plans, do-it-yourself retirement schemes, and companies like Enron that have left employees without any retirement savings. Ghilarducci puts forward a sweeping plan to revive the retirement-income system, a plan that will ensure that, after forty years of work, every American will receive 70 percent of their preretirement earnings, guaranteed for life. No other book makes such a persuasive case for overhauling the pension and Social Security system in order to provide older Americans with the financial stability they have earned and deserve.

This brief and polemical paper suggests that one crucial but under-investigated generator of health inequalities in Britain is the strategic decision-making of the wealthy and powerful. It is argued that the post-1970s dynamic between class and state which underpins this decision-making has been largely ignored by medical sociology in favour of repeated studies of the poor and powerless. Two case studies concerning (1) the pensions crisis, and (2) the global financial crisis, and their ramifications for health inequalities, are considered in some detail. A case is made that medical sociology neglects its critical and public obligations at its own peril.

This article summarizes the extremely precarious situation that municipalities, much like private corporations, now find themselves in, given their dramatically underfunded pension plans. The numbers are staggering, and retire­ment benefits cannot be sustained under pres­ent conditions. The bottom line is that both corporations and town governments must look to difficult options to remedy the problem. The troubling situations for municipalities are not geographical--from California to Texas to Florida, cities are faced with this daunting predicament. In the private sector, the trans­portation industry is not alone but is clearly hit by this phenomenon--United Airlines, Delta, U.S. Airways and Northwest are all facing a crisis in pensions. Even the New York City Transit Authority--public yet a transportation industry­--is in the same serious dilemma, and the recent strike has made the situation well known.[Copyright 2006 Sage Publications, Inc.]

All countries in the former transition economies of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe have undertaken public pension reforms of varying depth and orientation, often with the support of the World Bank. Although the reformed public pension schemes provide broad benefit adequacy, in most cases additional measures are needed to achieve fiscal sustainability in an aging society. 'Adequacy of Retirement Income after Pension Reforms in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe: Eight Country Studies' assesses the benefit adequacy of the reformed pension systems for eight countries—Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia—to identify policy gaps and options. The authors identify the motivations for reform against the backdrop of the trend toward multi-pillar arrangements, document key provisions, and compare them in the context of the World Bank's five-pillar paradigm for pension reform. They then evaluate the sustainability and adequacy of reformed pension systems and provide recommendations to address gaps and take advantage of opportunities for further reforms. The case studies and summary suggest the following broad policy conclusions: • Fiscal sustainability has improved in most study countries, but few are fully prepared for the inevitability of population aging. • The linkage between contributions and benefits has been strengthened, and pension system designs are better suited to market conditions • Levels of income replacement are generally adequate for all but some categories of workers (including those with intermittent formal sector employment or low lifetime wages), and addressing their needs requires initiatives that go beyond pension policy. • Further reforms should focus on extending labor force participation by the elderly to avoid benefit cuts that could undermine adequacy and very high contribution rates that could discourage formal sector employment. • More decisive financial market reforms are needed for funded provisions to deliver on the expectations of participants and keep funded pensions safe. This book will be of interest to policy makers, researchers, and everyone interested in the topic of pensions in the region, and beyond.

The Chinese pension system is highly fragmented and decentralized, with governance standards, pension fund management practices, their regulation and supervision varying considerably both across the funded components of the Chinese pension system and across provinces. This paper describes the key components of the system, highlights the progress made to date and identifies remaining weaknesses, in regard to information disclosure, the governance framework and pension fund management standards.

This paper discusses the key sources of vulnerabilities for pension plans and insurance companies in light of the global financial crisis of 2008. It also discusses how these institutional investors transit shocks to the rest of the financial sector and economy. The crisis has re-ignited the policy debate on key issues such as: 1) the need for countercyclical funding and solvency rules; 2) the tradeoffs implied in marked based valuation rules; 3) the need to protect contributors towards retirement from excessive market volatility; 4) the need to strengthen group supervision for large complex financial institutions including insurance and pensions; and 5) the need to revisit the resolution and crisis management framework for insurance and pensions.

U ovom se radu raspravlja o mirovinskim sustavima europskih zemalja i Hrvatske. Prvo se podsjeća na početke mirovinskih sustava, ekspanziju nakon Drugog svjetskog rata te krizu koja ih je zahvatila od sredine sedamdesetih godina. Danas se mirovinski sustavi nalaze pred krupnim izazovima, kao što su demografska regresija, financijski pritisak radi postizanja konkurentnosti na globaliziranom tržištu, transformacija gospodarstva, osobito tržišta rada, te snažni otpor građana mirovinskim reformama. U radu se raspravlja o mjerama koje su europske zemlje poduzimale kako bi novom socijalnom i gospodarskom kontekstu prilagodile mirovinske sustave. Govori se i o hrvatskom mirovinskom sustavu i njegovim mijenama tijekom posljednjih desetljeća. Upozorava se na aktualne probleme hrvatskog mirovinskog sustava te naznačuju pravci mogućih promjena. Zaključuje se da dugoročna održivost mirovinskog sustava, prije svega, ovisi o gospodarskom rastu, kao i o diversificiranoj strukturi financiranja mirovina.