Welfare Reform on the Web (March 2002): Pensions - Overseas

ANOTHER DUTCH MIRACLE? EXPLAINING DUTCH AND GERMAN PENSION TRAJECTORIES

M. Haverland

Journal of European Social Policy, vol. 11, 2001, p. 308-323

Both the Netherlands and Germany established comprehensive pay-as-you-go financed public pension schemes in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the Netherlands has reformed its system to achieve fully-fledged multi-tiered pension provision with a strong funded component. Until recently the German system relied almost exclusively on pay-as-you-go financing. Paper reconstructs the pension trajectories in the two countries in order to explore the role of path dependency, political choice and contingency in explaining this divergence.

DOES LABOR MATTER? INSTITUTIONS, LABOR UNIONS AND PENSION REFORM IN FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES

D. Béland

Journal of Public Policy, vol. 21, 2001, p. 153-172

Article compares labour's influence on the French and the American politics of pension reform since the 1980s. It looks at the institutional approach to labour politics; the historical development of the two pension systems; the end of welfare state expansion and the decline of labour unions; and finally pension reform and the idea of 'veto' players.

OLD-AGE PENSIONS: INDIVIDUAL OR COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY? AN INVESTIGATION OF PUBLIC OPINION ACROSS EUROPEAN WELFARE STATES

J. Gelissen

European Societies, vol. 3, 2001, p. 495-523

Using data from the Eurobarometer survey series, article studies the determinants of popular preferences concerning individual or collective responsibilities in the confext of old-age pensions. Are people's choices determined by their particular welfare state regimes only or by social characteristics of individuals?

THE WORLD BANK'S NEW SOCIAL POLICIES: PENSIONS

F. -X Merrien

International Social Science Journal, no. 170, 2001, p. 537-550

Author analyses the role of the World Bank in the current debates between international stakeholders regarding the policies required for economic prosperity and social development. In the field of pension policy the Bank has advocated the replacement of pay-as-you-go state pension schemes with privately managed, fully funded defined contribution schemes. Author analyses the effects of this new orthodoxy on governments in Latin America and central and Eastern Europe, and the appropriateness of the solutions proposed by the Bank.