Social Security Programs Throughout the World: Europe, 2010 provides a cross-national comparison of social security systems. It summarizes the five main social insurance programs: old age, disability, and survivors; sickness and maternity; work injury; unemployment; and family allowances. It is published in four regional volumes (Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and the Americas), one every 6 months.

Social Security Programs Throughout the World: Europe, 2012 provides a cross-national comparison of social security systems. It summarizes the five main social insurance programs: old age, disability, and survivors; sickness and maternity; work injury; unemployment; and family allowances. It is published in four regional volumes (Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and the Americas), one every 6 months.

This publication highlights the principal features of social security programs in more than 170 countries: old-age, survivors, and disability; sickness and maternity; work injury; unemployment; and family allowances. A set of tables in each volume provides information for each country on the types of social security programs, types of mandatory systems for retirement income, contribution rates, and demographic and other statistics related to social security.

In recent years, the retirement age for public pensions has increased across many countries, and additional increases are in progress or under discussion in many more. The seventh stage of an ongoing research project studying the relationship between social security programs and labor force participation, Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: The Capacity to Work at Older Ages explores people’s capacity to work beyond the current retirement age. It brings together an international team of scholars from twelve countries—Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States—to analyze this issue. Contributors find that many—but not all—individuals have substantial capacity to work at older ages. However, they also consider how policymakers might divide gains in life expectancy between years of work and retirement, as well as the main impediments to longer work life. They consider factors that influence the demand for older workers, as well as the evolution of health and disability status, which may affect labor supply from the older population.

This publication provides a cross-national comparison of social security systems. It summarizes the five main social insurance programs: old age, disability, and survivors; sickness and maternity; work injury; unemployment; and family allowances. It is published in four regional volumes (Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and the Americas), one every 6 months.

In developed countries, men’s labor force participation at older ages has increased in recent years, reversing a decades-long pattern of decline. Participation rates for older women have also been rising. What explains these patterns, and the differences in them across countries? The answers to these questions are pivotal as countries face fiscal and retirement security challenges posed by longer life-spans. This eighth phase of the International Social Security project, which compares the social security and retirement experiences of twelve developed countries, documents trends in participation and employment and explores reasons for the rising participation rates of older workers. The chapters use a common template for analysis, which facilitates comparison of results across countries. Using within-country natural experiments and cross-country comparisons, the researchers study the impact of improving health and education, changes in the occupation mix, the retirement incentives of social security programs, and the emergence of women in the workplace, on labor markets. The findings suggest that social security reforms and other factors such as the movement of women into the labor force have played an important role in labor force participation trends.