the workers were effectively nationalized by governments in Poland, Hungary and Argentina – who used the assets for governmental purposes while maintaining promises for future pension income (Price and Rudolph, 2013). As far as the author is aware there were no examples of employer sponsored (trust‐ based) pensions that were appropriated by governments – although in Ireland the government did impose a small levy on the assets of occupational pensions – akin to a limited form of `wealth tax – and governments do make changes to the regulatory, legal and tax environment that can impact benefit levels. Pension policy needs to deliver over a 40‐80‐year period. Given the certainly of shocks and changes over such a period, a diversified approach to delivering retirement income is a sound policy.

For the reader interested in which choices different countries have made, a good global survey is provided by International Patterns of Pension Provision II (Pallares‐Miralles and Whitehouse 2012), and, for a smaller set of countries, by the OECD’s Pensions At A Glance. International comparisons of saving for old age have been developed by the ‘FINDEX’ index and can be found in work by Demirguc‐Kunt and others (2015, 2016). Recent in‐depth regional reviews of history and current practice include: The Inverting Pyramid for Europe and Central Asia (Arias and Schwarz, 2013); Live Long and Prosper for East Asia Pacific (O’Keefe and others, 2016); Pension Systems in Southeast Asia (ADB 2013); Pensions at a Glance Latin America and Caribbean (2014); Pension Patterns and Challenges in Sub Saharan Africa (Dorfman, 2015); and for the 22 members of the Arab League, a review of Trends and Policy Reforms (Price and others, 2017). For longevity comparisons, there is the UN’s World Population Prospects (UNDESA, 2015), and for long‐run international comparisons of asset returns in 22 countries since 1900, the London Business School, Credit Suisse Global Investment Year Book (Dimson, Marsh and Staunton, 2016).

There are many organizations that provide regular international comparisons in the form of a league table that can provide some comparative information, such as the Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index (Mercer, 2016) or the Global Aging Index (2013, 2015). Reducing a pension system to a single number is obviously aimed at creating debate and discussion – but the reports are perhaps even more useful for the in‐depth discussion of the characteristics of each country. In recent years, the World Bank has partnered with the OECD and IOPS annual pension statistics exercise with the aim of making its coverage increasingly comprehensive. It is worth highlighting a note of caution with any regional or international comparison of pension systems. It is a heroic effort to keep up with the number of changes in a typical pension system, to be sure that administrative data sources are accurate, the latest surveys are representative, or to do full justice to the complexities and nuances below broadly comparable descriptions. So, they can and should be used to look at big picture trends and areas for development, but it is important to validate the data and conclusions with a thorough technical review of a country when developing reforms.

# **3. The first design question for how to deliver private pensions**

Before getting to questions of contribution rates, accruals, investment strategy and payout phases it is important to have a rigorous focus on each part of the pension value chain. How will individuals and employers be identified, enrolled, make contributions, have their accounts created and managed, their investment strategies developed and executed and finally their pension income distributed? This is important because pension markets – particularly those that cover most people in a country – are created deliberately and by policy action rather than emerging spontaneously. It is certainly the case that there are forms of voluntary provision in many countries at all stages of development that are the outcome of 8