ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the relative size of private pensions has significant consequences: comparisons of the economic well-being of the elderly, without taking private pensions into account, would be seriously misleading since their relative importance varies across nations. It focuses on the differences in financing, and the relative importance of funding in the different programs and countries. The private-public mix is also likely to affect the overall inequality among the elderly. Pension policy is an arena for strategic policy making of the major interest groups in industrial societies, and private pensions can offer attractive alternatives for the actors. The relative importance of private pensions is likely to structure the interests in public policy initiatives and thus has wider implications for the political economy of the welfare state. In the comparative research on the factors that bring about cross-national variation in welfare state provisions, a variety of strategies have been applied.
