This paper examines developments of pension reforms since 1990's in the transition countries, especially in the three Central European countries, Russia and Kazakhstan, and it reveals characteristic features of the reforms in those countries. The transition countries have been confronting with three common tasks in the field of pension reforms: (1) a departure from old pension systems under the socialist regime, (2) pension reforms as a countermeasure against a transitional deep depression of an economy, (3) efforts to tackle with aging problems. But it is clarified that a common key question in the pension reforms is whether and how to introduce a mandatory private funded scheme into the pubic pension system, which has been strongly recommended by the World Bank, and that new systems as a result of the reforms vary widely in this respect in various countries. This paper underlines that deficits not only in the balance of the pension budget in the given country, but also in its balance of government budget and in its international balance of payment have influenced the pension reforms seriously.
