The essays in this volume chronicle the efforts of twelve developed countries to prepare for their coming age waves—and in particular, to reform their public pension systems. They contrast and compare retirement systems in different countries, discuss recent reforms, and
evaluate likely developments. If the essays had been written a decade ago, the dominant story almost everywhere would have been about political gridlock and the seeming inability of democratically elected
governments to make far-sighted resource tradeoffs between older and younger generations. But over the past few years, many governments have begun to grapple seriously with the challenge. Germany, Japan, and Sweden have all indexed their public pension systems, at least partially, to their changing demographics. Instead of building in automatic cost-escalation, indexing formulas now build in automatic cost-restraint. Many countries are also moving aggressively to boost funded retirement savings.