Retirement funding looks very different depending on where you live.

While the United States leans heavily on voluntary 401(k)-style savings plans, other nations rely on mandatory contributions or more traditional pensions to ensure broad coverage and steady income.

Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index takes these structural differences into consideration when ranking some of the world's biggest retirement systems.

"We do it because we want to give a picture of the retirement landscape," said Christine Mahoney, global pensions leader at Mercer, a consulting firm. "We try to look at what the public systems are, what the private systems are, and look at how people will fare in retirement across all of those."

The U.S. retirement system received a C+ rating from the Mercer CFA

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