“It’s rather a good system,” she said, noting that she had at first worried that she would not have a large enough pension because she had once spent many years traveling abroad. But now she feels reassured, having steered additional money into her pension fund.

Ms. Van Wijk likes the Dutch system of converting workers’ pension reserves into an annuity upon retirement. “There are real advantages to taking an annuity,” she said.

She complained, however, that the Netherlands had increased its retirement age from 65 to 66 1/2. Fearing budget deficits and large unfunded retirement liabilities, the Netherlands has joined Britain, Italy, the United States and other countries in raising its retirement age, a move that increases contributions to the system while holding down outlays.

“The Dutch realize that there can be too much leakage,” said Peter Kiveron, director of the Holland Financial Center, a research group, insisting that the United States and other countries make it too easy for people to take large amounts out of their 401(k)’s long before they retire and as soon as they retire, causing people to run out of funds well before they turn 75 or 80. “The Dutch have learned their lessons and have a very rigid system.”

Even a cursory study of retirement systems abroad makes clear that many countries are far more willing than the United States to mandate painful steps by employers and workers.

Chile requires workers to contribute 10 percent of each paycheck to a 401(k)-type fund. In Australia, employers must contribute 9 percent of each worker’s salary into a retirement fund, and that contribution is set to rise to 12 percent in 2020. Australia’s politicians, conservative and liberal, concluded that the country’s version of social security was providing retirees with too paltry a basic retirement check.

In the United States, such moves would prompt many to denounce heavy-handed grabs of workers’ pay and expensive burdens on employers. But experts say it would be wise to study other nations’ systems for tips on strengthening America’s system.