The Pensions Multiverse
The form that pensions provision takes is far from uniform, even among highly developed capitalist economies. This chapter surveys this diversity, but also the flawed ways in which pensions variation is usually understood, in both officialdom and academic scholarship. The intention, however, is not to replace one typology with another; while some of the most important differences across countries are actually understated, there is also a tendency to overstate systemic differences based on a highly parsimonious account of varieties within (welfare) capitalism. The chapter considers the main features and implications of pensions provision across many developed and developing countries, and recent reform agendas (including Europeanization), and develops a new approach to understanding private pensions in capitalist economies with reference to the temporal and cross-generational nature of provision.