Turner uses the documented experiences of many countries - including the U.K., Sweden, Chile, Australia, Canada, and others - and the tools of economics to analyze the public policy issues surrounding the proposed implementation of individual accounts as part of the U.S. Social Security system.

Turner identifies the current problems facing pension policy for U.S. employer-provided pension plans and recommends solutions to those problems based on his examination of pension systems in other industrialized nations.

The share of Americans with defined contribution pension plans now exceeds the share of those with defined benefit plans. Wolff refers to this as the "great transformation" and it leads him to examine recent evidence to see whether there are winners and losers resulting from this switch away...

Muir and Turner gather an international roster of pension experts who present what they think would be the ideal pension systems for their countries and why. Those countries include the United States, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Poland, and Japan.