The Gender Dimensions of Pension Systems: Policies and Constraints for the Protection of Older Women

This paper documents the pervasiveness of women's lack of income security in old age across a large number of countries, but also points to a number of important policy measures that can be taken to address gender pension gaps. It focuses on how pension systems interact with other social and labour market conditions over women's life courses to increase or decrease gender inequalities in old age. It reviews pension systems to pinpoint the key sources of gender inequality in they way they are structured. The paper shows that crucial policy choices for the protection of women must take into account the conditions for entitlements in pension systems, the types of transfers that are promoted between women and men, the policy tools available to offset gender differences in paid work, earnings and unpaid work and the protection of the most vulnerable social groups through redistributive benefits. The paper concludes with some recommendations to make pension systems more gender equitable and suggests that policies aimed at achieving gender equality in pension rights and benefits need to work on several complementary fronts (including measures regarding pension system design, but also labour market regulation and the reconciliation of work and family life) and consider the diversity of women's situation across social strata as well as across countries. This paper was produced for UN Women's flagship report Progress of the World's Women 2015-2016 to be released as part of the UN Women discussion paper series

On the Distributional Implications of Social Protection Reforms in Latin America

The paper tracks recent changes in the components of social protection in Latin America, the reforms to social insurance in the 1990s and the growth of social assistance in the 2000s, and assesses their effects on poverty and inequality and implications for welfare institutions in the region. The analysis focuses on public subsidies to social protection and their rebalancing. The paper concludes that the expansion of social assistance in the region will result in social protection institutions which are more comprehensive and distributionally progressive.Latin America, social insurance, social assistance, social protection, poverty, inequality

A review of social protection in Latin America

This paper reviews social protection trends and policy responses in Latin America as part of a global scoping study on social protection commissioned by Ford Foundation (See Appendix One for ToR for this paper). The paper is organised as follows (following the paper contents as described in Appendix One): Section 1 identifies the main trends in poverty and vulnerability in the region, with particular references to rural-urban and life course poverty incidence. Section 2 provides a review of social protection trends. It discusses the two main areas of change and innovation in the last two decades: the reform of social insurance provision and the rapid expansion of social assistance schemes. Section 3 identifies some potential points of engagement between Ford Foundation work and the social protection policy agenda in the region

Income transfers in Russia : problems and some policy directions.

The decision to move to a market economy sets in train two major forces. 1. The fall in output has led to a reduction in personal incomes and created a fiscal crisis. 2. A widening earnings and income distribution is a result of wage and price liberalisation, and is an inherent part of the reform. The change leads to rising unemployment and increased poverty. It also has major administrative implications. Thus, by its very nature, the reform process creates forces which require a major reshaping of the social safety net to address three major issues: poverty relief, cost containment, and strengthening administrative capacity. Of the recommendations, five are paramount. 1. The minimum level of the major benefits should be at or above subsistence and, at least in the short run, should be fully protected against inflation. 2. Cost containment implies that, in the short run, benefits above the minimum should be protected only to the extent that resources permit; and, to the maximum extent compatible with political realities, the right to combine full old age or invalidity pension with more or less full-time work should be withdrawn for individuals below normal retirement age. 3. Administrative capacity should be strengthened. In particular, the administration of cash benefits requires modernisation. Such a process is crucial both to ensure effective benefit delivery, and to containing costs. 4. Social insurance and pension contributions should be shared between worker and employer, with the worker's contribution appearing on his/her payslip. 5. Short-run problems should be addressed in a manner consistent with long-run policy design. In particular, as soon as economically and administratively feasible, the relationship between social insurance benefits and individual contributions should be strengthened.

Unemployment insurance savings accounts in Latin America : overview and assessment

The unemployment protection systems that exist in most Latin American economies are generally considered inadequate in terms of providing insurance to workers and are prone to generate stratified labor markets. Recently, research effort and policy interest has turned to Unemployment Insurance Savings Accounts (UISAs) as an alternative to traditional systems of unemployment insurance. UISAs are schemes of individual mandatory savings that smooth income over an individual's life cycle time rather than pooling unemployment risk over the total working population at a point in time. Although this form of unemployment insurance diminishes the moral hazard problems associated with traditional insurance methods, it presents problems of its own. First, it is questionable that these systems provide adequate protectionagainst unemployment risk. Additionally, their effects on the promotion of informal labor markets and their administrative costs are yet to be determined. Finally, the effectiveness as a form of unemployment insurance depends critically upon the performance and credibility of the financial institutions managing the funds. This paper examines the experience of Latin American countries that use UISAs, with the hope of highlighting the problems of the system and identifying areas for future theoretical and empirical work. In conclusion, the overall effect of UISAs depends on a vast array of specific country characteristics and program parameters. The way the system is implemented, existing labor regulation, the extent of the informal economy and the scope for collusive behavior greatly influence the success of these programs. This calls for a more extensive research effort in the area.Labor Markets,,Labor Policies,Access to Finance,Banks&Banking Reform

Options for Radical Reforms to Pension Systems: Chilean and Swedish Models Compared

Pension systems are under stress in the whole world. Demographic tendencies, informal labour markets, and distributive designs –inter alia-, coupled with the rigidity of the legislation, and implied financial imbalances, social debate and –sometimes-, reforms. These could be classified into two main categories: parametric and radical reforms. Two models have features to be classified as radical pension reforms in the last decades: Chilean (or AFP) and Swedish (or NDC) models. The central aim of this essay is to compare both radical reforms, at the level of “ideal types”. Doing that, some questions are answered, namely: In what feature do they have differences? Which are the incentives they set to human behaviour in order to meet the goals of the design? Are the models truly different? Which problems do they address and which to they set aside? Moreover, which problems remain unsolved, and what troubles do they add? Here, the intention is to concentrate in the technical aspects of the design intended to solve financial problems of the systems, trying to show the relevant trade offs.Pension systems; AFJP

The Latin American experience in pension system reform: Coverage, fiscal issues and possible implications for China

In the past two decades, Latin American countries reformed their pension systems focusing mainly on addressing the weaknesses of the contributory schemes - fiscal unsustainability, low coverage levels and a high degree of segmentation- and barely addressed the non-contributory element. The reform experiences show however that the intended reforms did not manage to meet their objectives. Firstly, to this day, a large proportion of the population remains inadequately covered by the contributory system. Secondly, the fiscal performance and outcome of the reform was worse than originally planned. The possibilities for the success of these reforms faced several constraints of a structural nature that are independent of the pension system itself and that as a result can not be overcome by a pension reform including mainly the limited savings capacity of some population groups and the instability and precariousness of the labor markets in the region. The Latin American experience shares similarities with that of China in terms of coverage, labor market informality. Both cases attest to the importance of combining contributory and non-contributory components in pension reform design.Pension reform; contributory schemes; coverage; Fiscal unsustainability; Contributory coverage; contribution density; fragmentation; transition costs; pension reform in Latin America; pension reform in China

Pension Reform in Bolivia: A Review of Approach and Experience

The paper analyzes the Bolivian experience in switching from an old publicly managed pay-as-you-go pension system to a privately managed, fully funded pension system.Pension reform, Bolivia