The estimations in this paper show that there is a high risk that a very significant share of the workers registered in the work history of the main social security institution of Uruguay (the BPS) will not be able to comply with the condition of contributing 35 years to access the pension when...

In this paper we analyze the recent performance, perspectives and some policy options for two public social security programs in Uruguay: pensions and unemployment insurance. We review the impact of these programs on public expenditure, including recent and expected future trends, and on income...

Social Security systems in Latin America prior to the reforms exhibited some problems that have been reported also in other parts of the world, including OECD countries. This is the case for instance of the increasing pressure that the pension system put on fiscal accounts. Other problems that...

Incomplete and highly fragmented work histories threaten to leave many contributors of the pension schemes in Latin America without the minimum pension guarantee or even without access to the ordinary pension. We propose a methodology to assess this risk, identify vulnerable groups and study...

Most public pension systems failed to build trust funds, even when it was clear that they were becoming unsustainable in the long run. It is argued in this paper that politicians ruling public pension programs have strong incentives to exhaust the trust funds, distributing benefits among voters...

In Uruguay, the pension programs cover over 90% of the elderly. Men are more likely to be eligible for the contributory pensions, while women are over-represented in the assistential and survivor pension programs. This difference is linked to the fact that women tend to have longer spells out of...

The contribution of government transfer programs to inequality is often assessed by analyzing to what extent the benefits paid go to lower income families. Several analysts have found that some key government transfers actually go mostly to middle and high income families and thus contribute to...

Most public pension systems failed to build pension funds, even when it was clear that the benefits the systems were paying could not be sustained in the long run. I argue in this paper that politicians ruling public pension programs have strong incentives to exhaust the pension funds, offering...

The activity rate of mature men has increased in Uruguay in recent decades. This trend is remarkably different from what has been observed in most developed and Latin American countries. We analyze in this paper the incentives to retire implicit in the main social security program of Uruguay. We...

This paper summarizes the main findings in a series of coordinated studies conducted to assess the impact of social security programs on the distribution of lifetime labor income in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay. The country-case studies find varying degrees of redistribution,...