This book focuses on experiences with and lessons learned from the sweeping reforms to the pension systems of Latin America and the Caribbean during the 1990s and early 2000s, which shifted the burden of old-age security from the public to the private sector. The book's main objective is to...

While decreasing inequality is generally considered desirable, and there is a growing understanding of which policies do and do not promote equality, much less is known regarding why these policies are adopted to varying degrees of intensity in different times and places. To explain this...

In 1995, the government of Uruguay undertook a first pillar-based reform of the pension system, as opposed to the second pillar-based Chilean-style reform. The paper's first section describes Uruguay's pension system prior to reform. It demonstrates quite clearly that the crisis faced by that...

As many pension systems in the world, the Belizean pension system faces two main challenges. First, there is a need to manage financial risks to public finances arising from the forecasted increase in liabilities due to an ageing population. Second, the ageing process increases the demand for...

Empirical analysis of two decades of pioneering pension and social security reform in Latin America and the Caribbean shows that much has been achieved, but that critical challenges remain. In tackling this unfinished agenda, a great deal can be learned from the reform experience of countries in...

This paper analyzes the aggregate effects of a revenue neutral fiscal-cum-social policy reform in a typical developing country that consists of two main changes: (1) the implementation of universal social insurance to replace the current dual social protection system (i.e., a reconfiguration of...

This paper assesses the effects of the Colombian Unemployment Subsidy (US), which includes benefits as well as training for some recipients. Using regression discontinuity and matching differences-in-differences estimators, the study finds that participation in the labor market, earnings of...

Tax policy is among the most common and relevant instruments in the toolkit of policy-makers when thinking about promoting growth, yet there is not compelling evidence regarding its effect in Latin American countries. Using a variety of approaches, we estimate the effects on growth of the most...

This technical note discusses the civil servant pension system in Brazil over the past two decades. Since 1998 the Brazilian government has been implementing reforms to increase the financial sustainability of its pension schemes - seeking to contain pension deficits without hurting acquired...

Mexico is characterized by a dual social insurance architecture. Firms and workers in salaried contractual relations are obligated to pay for a bundled set of health, pension and related programs. Nonsalaried workers benefit from an unbundled set of parallel programs paid by the government. We...