November 2023

Social Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean 2022: Transforming education as a basis for sustainable development

By ECLAC Social Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean, 2022 has four chapters. Chapter I presents the relevant macroeconomic background in terms of the evolution of per capita GDP, employment, household income distribution and the consumer price index, and looks at how income inequality and poverty have changed over the past two decades (2002–2021). The chapter also discusses changes that occurred in social stratification during the pandemic. Chapter II addresses the worrying silent crisis of education as another of the...

October 2023

Allianz Pension Report Latam special 2022

By Allianz Research Even before the pandemic, the pension systems of most Latin American countries ranked in the bottom third in international comparison of their long-term adequacy and sustainability in our last Global Pension Report. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a double blow with respect to pension systems’ adequacy: On the one hand, rocketing unemployment rates diminished the share of the labor force in formal employment that is covered by pension schemes; on the other hand, lower contributions to pension...

September 2023

Aging in Latin America and the Caribbean: social protection and quality of life of older persons

By Natalia Aranco, Mariano Bosch, Marco Stampini, Oliver Azuara Herrera, Laura Goyeneche, Pablo Ibarrarán, Deborah Oliveira, Maria Torre Retana Reyes, William D. Savedoff & Eric Torres Ramírez  In this report, we analyze older persons quality of life in Latin America and the Caribbean, its relationship with social protection policies, and how these policies must adapt to respond to population aging. We create a measure of quality of life of older persons which combines healthy life expectancy and income security. For...

July 2023

Pensions for all. Proposals for more inclusive pension systems in Latin America.

Edited by David Tuesta y Gautam Bhardwaj One of the pending tasks in Latin America is the development of a pension system that is widely accessible, sufficient and financially sustainable over time. Beyond the different degrees of progress in each of the countries, they all face similar internal and global challenges. In particular, the problems of high informality of institutions and labor markets make the road even more uphill. The recent Covid19 pandemic scenario has highlighted the structural weaknesses of pension...

June 2023

The taboo of aging, an obstacle to thriving businesses in Latin America

In Latin America, despite being the “fastest aging region in the world,” according to an IDB report, the needs of those who are part of the silver economy “are not being met” due to the taboo that aging represents for their societies, experts gathered in Bogota discussed Wednesday. “We have, as a society, to start matching who those real consumers are and who we think they are because that dichotomy makes it impossible for businesses to thrive,” lamented the founder...

May 2023

Bringing Back the State: Understanding Varieties of Pension Re-reforms in Latin America

By Leandro N.Carrera & Marina Angelaki Pension policy is a highly political issue across Latin America. Since the mid-2000s, several countries have re-reformed their pension systems with a general trend toward more state involvement, yet with significant variation. This article contends that policy legacies and the institutional political setting are key to understanding such variation. Analyzing the cases of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, this article shows that where a weak legacy, characterized by low coverage and savings rates, a weakly...

April 2023

Social protection and response to covid-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean: Innovations in registration and payment systems

By Nurth Palomo, Luis Vargas Faulbaum, Anna Carolina Machado, Camila Rolon and Fábio Veras Soares, Monica Rubio, Florencia Alejandre & Gerardo Escaroz The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the foundations of the economy and provoked devastating social effects in all the countries in the world, being Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) one of the most affected regions. As of mid-March 2021, there were 37 million reported cases in the region and a staggering 1,275,567 deaths, equivalent to...

March 2023

Why Latin nations pay lifetime pensions to their former presidents

A question runs through Latin America and creates controversy: Should presidents who leave office receive special pensions for the rest of their lives? In recent months, there have been requests from legislators in the countries of Argentina, Ecuador or Costa Rica to remove life pensions for former heads of state, as Mexico previously revealed how much they cost. This type of payment has existed in other parts of the world and in Latin America for decades, not only to compensate presidents...

January 2023

Towards construction of comprehensive care systems in Latin America and the Caribbean: ELEMENTS FOR IMPLEMENTATION

By ECLAC The Latin American and Caribbean region is experiencing an unprecedented economic and social crisis. The effects of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic have spread to all spheres of human life, hurting economies, changing the way we interact, and causing extensive societal changes. The crisis has highlighted and exacerbated structural gaps, deepening pre-existing inequalities and exposing the vulnerabilities of political, economic, and social protection systems. The onset of the crisis magnified the structural challenges of gender inequality, reversing much...

December 2022

ILO warns: 34.5% of over 65s have no income in Latin America and the Caribbean

The International Labor Organization (ILO) on Thursday warned about elderly people's issues in Latin America regarding labor income and pensions. The report indicates that 34.5 percent of people over 65 years of age in that region do not receive wages or pensions, a higher percentage than before the Covid-19 pandemic, when this indicator was at 31.9 percent. This is one of the main conclusions of the report on social protection in Latin America and the Caribbean, drafted by ILO. According to the...