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The main goal of this paper is to produce a comparative policy analysis of nine pension systems (Chile, Peru, Colombia, Uruguay, Bolivia, Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic) by reviewing four variables of interest and by analyzing in-depth interviews of officials in charge of supervising pension systems. In this evaluation of pension education programs in Latin America, the experiences of Chile and Uruguay stand out. The study also examines social security education, which helps inform people about their rights and obligations under social security systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over more than two decades, both experts and the public have considered that profits earned by Chilean Pension Fund Administrators (AFP for its acronym in Spanish) are excessively high. However, there is little known about how much the industry should earn in equilibrium. In this paper, I show that the 25.4% return on equity (ROE) earned by the AFP industry over 2006-2015 was 4.8 times as high as the 5.3% that can be explained by its exposure to market risk. In monetary terms, out of the US$ 4.4 billion earned by the AFP industry over the last decade, nearly $ 3.5 billion can be considered as “excessive”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Latin American context, Chile has the highest level of per capita income and the human development index, though the distribution of income is quite unequal. Unlike Uruguay, Chile has one of the more unequal income distributions of the region. In 2003, Chile had Gini Coefficient of 8.5 points higher than Uruguay. Using micro/simulations, the analysis shows that most of the difference regarding income distribution comes from the wealthier households, particularly those that belong to the top 2%. Those households get the greatest proportion of resources coming from non-labor income. At the same time, the difference in returns to higher education explains another 20% of the income differences between Chile and Uruguay. Social conditions such as social security benefits and the participation of women in the labor market are not significant to explain the differences between these countries. Finally, this paper shows that national account adjustment to income information in Chilean households' survey explains a third of the Gini coefficient gap between Chile and Uruguay, without the national account adjustment, the income distribution gap among both countries would diminish in three points from earlier estimation. Even though this significative reduction the reasons to explain the gap would remain identical than previous analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1981 Chile began a wave of privatization and market-friendly reforms of social security systems in Latin America; Argentina did the same in 1993. In 2008, Chile and Argentina reformed their pension systems again. Chile maintains the private capitalization system complemented with a basic pension and solidarity payments while Argentina eliminated the capitalization pillar and replaced it by a single integrated delivery system publicly administered. This paper analyzes the policy reforms of pension systems as a result of the comparison between countries, as well as between market and state led reforms and state led reforms: Chile (1981 and 2008) and Argentina (1993 and 2008). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]