What do we really know and understand about pensions? This book provides a much-needed basic guide to the issues surrounding pension policy, not just in the UK but worldwide. Michael Hill offers an illuminating examination of this highly topical subject, reviewing contemporary arguments about pensions in the UK and elsewhere, and emphasizing the difficulty of reconciling short political time frames with the provision of long term pension policy. Critical of the many 'quick fix' approaches to the topic, the author sets out the competing political and economic considerations for developing pension policy within democratic politics. Pensions provides a brief history of the way pensions have developed to date and clearly explains the complexity of worldwide pension policies.