As the role of private pension systems grows in importance, there is a need to monitor their development and review their performance in an international context, especially following the crisis in the financial markets in 2008. This first edition of the OECD Private Pensions Outlook provides essential data on assets, investments, membership, and industry structure based on the latest official statistics, as well as a framework for evaluating the trends shaping the pensions industry, based on the role of the private pensions in relation to the public pension system. It also provides comprehensive country profiles, describing private pension arrangements in individual OECD countries. This edition's special feature covers the implications for pensions and private pensions policy of the financial crisis. This publication includes StatLinks, URLs linking graphs and tables via the internet to Excel® table containing the underlying data.