Comparative analysis of coverage, distribution, and replacement rate in the pension systems of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay in 1995, 2005-2006 and 2014-2015 from household survey microdata

Abstract

Social security has been central to the planning of public policies. Recent pension systems reforms have produced important changes in coverage, pension income distribution, and replacement rates among the elderly. The objective of this paper is to make a comparative analysis of these three aspects in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay from the microdata of household surveys, in addition to show the results achieved by these countries after the implementation of transcendental reforms since the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s. On average, pension coverage in the five selected countries increased almost 20 percentage points (p.p.), from 67.4 % to 87.1 % in the above-mentioned period. The inequality of pension income, measured by Gini index, shows a considerable reduction in the same period. In the same way, the replacement rate also had an improvement of almost 15 p.p. going from 37.4 % to 51.7 %. The selected countries have followed different strategies regarding the design of their pension systems to include people with more unstable contributory histories, especially women. Nevertheless, much of the improvement of the indicators is due to the implementation of non-contributory or semi-contributory programs.