Reassessing Pension Reform in Chile and Other Countries in Latin America1

Chile has been a world pioneer in the structural reform of social security pensions and influenced similar changes in Latin America and Eastern Europe, as well as the programs of international financial organizations and the world debate on the subject. More than two decades have elapsed since the Chilean reform was implemented and several other countries in Latin America have accumulated important experience also. This paper gathers and analyzes legal and statistical data, as well as technical studies on such reforms in eleven countries of the region, in order to accomplish three tasks: (1) describe the three different general models followed and the features of the reforms in those countries; (2) evaluate the effects of the reforms in key aspects: labor force coverage, compliance, competition, administrative costs, pension level and gender, impact on national savings, fiscal costs, capital market development and investment returns; and (3) draw useful lessons from these reforms (in general and on social protection for the poor) to Latin America, Asia and other regions of the world.