International Perspectives on Supplementary Pensions

This international comparison of pension plans lends great understanding to the transformation taking place in almost every nation around the world. It covers ten of the twelve countries of the European Union, as well as the United States and Japan. The project is interdisciplinary, covering a number of fields, such as economics, law, actuarial science, sociology, and political science, that contribute to the analysis of retirement income systems. The chapters vary in scope - some are comparative, some are restricted to a single country or to one type of plan in one country. Despite their diversity, the chapters share a common awareness of three aspects of pension plans: the importance of actors' roles in shaping each system, the different economic and social domains affected by retirement plans, and the interconnections between social security and supplementary plans.

EMMANUEL REYNAUD is a researcher in Paris, where he works on international comparisons of retirement systems. He is the French reporter for the European Commission's observatory on Complementary Social Security Schemes, and is a member of the committee of experts of the French Observatoire des retraites. He is the author of the OECD country report on private pensions in France and of a book in French on the retirement systems of the United States, Germany, and the United Kindgom.

LUCY apROBERTS is a researcher on the economics of social welfare at the Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES) in Paris. Her work focuses on the links between state-run social insurance and occupational benefit plans in the United States and France. She is coauthor, with Emmanuel Reynaud, of Les Systemes de Retraite a L'Etranger.

BRYN DAVIES is an actuary in the United Kindgom. He provides advice to trade unions on supplementary pension plans. He is the author of a recent report from the Institute of Public Policy Research entitled Better Pensions for All.

GERARD HUGHES is an economist at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin. He has acted as a consultant to the OECD on pensions and labor market issues and is the author of the OECD country report on private pensions in Ireland.